Lombroso made an exhaustive study of the problem of the origin of the greater development of sympathy in the female sex, and discussed how, notwithstanding this fact, the frequent tendency to cruelty in women can be explained: he sees in this one of those contrasts which are common in the sphere of the emotional life, but which, with progress in civilization, tend to disappear, owing to the development of sympathetic feelings. The rest of the emotional life of woman is also adapted to her profession of motherhood; and this is true, above all, of the sexual feelings, which thus seem to be constructed almost entirely upon a “masochistic” basis. Strong erotic feelings, when they do occur in women, are, according to Lombroso, an approximation to the masculine type; they are, that is to say, abnormal in women. In respect to moral development, he regards woman as inferior to man. “We cannot, indeed, say that woman displays to the same degree as the child the lineaments of moral idiocy, for she is saved from this by her endowment with maternal love and with sympathy. Fundamentally, however, woman remains non-moral, and this often precisely in consequence of her sympathy. She exhibits numerous traits of character ... which prevent her from approaching to the same degree as man that balance between rights and duties, between egoism and altruism, which is the ultimate goal of moral development.” By means of historical and ethnological data, the importance of which, notwithstanding the criticism of Westermarck, has not been shaken, Lombroso endeavours to prove that during the long ages of the life of prehistoric humanity certain conditions were generally dominant in the sexual life which are now regarded as constituting prostitution—that is to say, he considers that prostitution and prostitutes at the present day are reversionary or atavistic phenomena. The intimate description given by Lombroso of the psychical life of the prostitute has notably contributed to our interpretation of prostitution in the atavistic sense. This explains why it is that among prostitutes the criminal type is found more frequently and more markedly than it is even among female criminals. Thus, for Lombroso, the prostitute, even more than the homicidal robber, is the genuine typical representative, the prototype, of criminality—the counterpart of the male major criminal; and in social co-operation with the latter, the prostitute gives rise to the institution of soutenage.[18]