The dependence of prostitution upon marriage--The extent and difficulties of the problem involved--Prostitution essentially a woman's question--Women's past attitude towards it--The diffusion of disease by means of prostitution--Apathy and ignorance of women--This changing--What action will women take in the future?--Grounds for fear--The White Slave Bill--Its absurd futility--The opinion of Bernard Shaw--Poverty as a cause of prostitution--This not the only factor--The real evil lies deeper--The economic reformer--The moral crusade--Men's passions--Seduction--These causes need careful examination--Lippert's view--Idleness, frivolity, and love of finery as causes--The desire for excitement--The need for personal knowledge of the prostitute--What I have learnt from different members of this profession--The prostitute's attitude towards her trade--The sale of sex very profitable to the expert trader--The sexual frigidity of the prostitute--Importance and significance of this--A further examination into the causes of the evil--Poverty seldom the chief motive for prostitution--The influence of inheritance upon the sexual life--The degradation of our legitimate loves the ultimate cause of prostitution--The demand for the prostitute by men--Causes of this demand--Repression of the primitive sexual instincts by civilisation--The foolishness of casting blame upon men--The duplex morality of the sexes--Its influence on the degradation of passion--Woman's unprofitable service to chastity--The connection with prostitution--My belief in passion as the only source of help. CHAPTER X THE SOCIAL FORMS OF THE SEXUAL RELATIONSHIP _I.--Marriage_ "The race flows through us, the race is the drama and we are the incidents. This is not any sort of poetical statement; it is a statement of fact. In so far as we are individuals, in so far as we seek to follow merely individual ends, we are accidental, disconnected, without significance, the sport of chance. In so far as we realise ourselves as experiments of the species for the species, just in so far do we escape from the accidental and the chaotic. We are episodes in an experience greater than ourselves."--H.G. WELLS.