There are but two possible exceptions to this rule, and they occur where the reproductive instinct has been subjected to the process known to psychologists as _sublimation_. This innocuous transmutation of the sex appetite and emotions may be effected either by means of Christianity (religious fervour)[118] or Alcohol (dypsomania). When either of these potent sublimators of the sex impulse has come into operation, it is no longer safe to argue from the spectacle of a cheerful and happy spinster of middle age, that in her Nature was not very strong from the start. But, again, the fact should be emphasized that with the spread of enlightenment on the one hand, and the general decline in vigorous health on the other, these hitherto unfailing means of sex-sublimation are becoming ever less and less accessible to the women of the nation. A generation has arisen on whom the fundamental tenets of the old faith have lost their hold, and in whom, therefore, it is becoming ever more and more difficult for Christianity to become a burning substitutive passion; while this same generation can no longer undertake the alcoholic cure, owing to the fact that human health is no longer what it was.[119] Before proceeding to a discussion of the negative spinster, I now propose to consider one aspect only of the positive unmarried girl of the poorer or working classes. There can be little doubt that in her case, very much more frequently than in the case of the well-to-do spinster, compensation is sought in some kind of illicit relation to the males either of her own class or of the class above. The statistics of prostitution alone show what an enormous contribution the women of the poorer or working classes make to the ranks of the courtesans in Europe; and seeing what the alternative usually is—that is to say, a life of drudgery unrelieved by any brighter element and aggravated by all the evils of unsuccessful repression—it is not surprising that among the more positive girls of the poorer classes, particularly in towns, there are many who go to swell the army of fast women. But at this point it will be necessary for me to digress a little in order to make quite clear my own standpoint in regard to this very vexed question of prostitution. For it is only an evil in modern Western Civilization because people insist on making it so. Our civilization stands or falls as a whole. The intricate adjustments which constitute its fabric, and the minute ramifications that wander in all directions from every centre in its complicated organization to every other centre, and sometimes to every other civilization, lend to its various parts a character so interdependent and mutually subservient, that it is no longer possible to lay hold of any important portion of it, with a view to condemnation, without thereby condemning the whole.