It only remains now to say a word on the position of the prostitute herself. From the psychological and physical point of view the sadness of her plight does not reside, as the Puritans of England suppose, in the moral turpitude of her lot, or in her loathing of it—for that is simply high-falutin’ nonsense.[124] It resides in the fact that her very taste for her calling, or the very desire that drew her into it—that she herself in fact—is a physiological misunderstanding. Her calling, like that of the childless married woman, presupposes that she will have to cry “Halt!” to a physiological process in her being, which only finds its first step in the coitus. By a false analogy with man’s sexual life the orgasm, which to woman is only the beginning of a long cycle of sex-experiences which end with the weaning of the child, is the only part of the female cycle which is vouchsafed her. Like the barren woman, she is denied the whole of the subsequent stages of the cycle, so rich in delightful experiences to her, and continues like a man to confine herself to orgasms—orgasms _ad infinitum_.[125] It is this that constitutes the sad side of the prostitute’s life. If she have a tragedy, this is her tragedy. But for fear lest, prompted by vague moral prejudices, we feel tempted to make too much even of this aspect of her life—generally overlooked, by the by, in all dissertations I have read about her—we should remember that she shares this sad experience not only with thousands of spinsters, but also with thousands of married women who, from some cause or other, frequently economic pressure, are compelled to remain childless.[126] From the national point of view, the feature about modern prostitution (apart from the evils incidental to it which are preventable) which is most strongly to be deprecated, is the fact that, since it is from working-class girls that its ranks are largely recruited, the danger is that it is upon the most temperamental and most positive of these girls—upon the most desirable of these girls, therefore—that the temptation to illicit relations with men is likely to exercise the most potent influence. (2) THE NEGATIVE SPINSTER I now come to the consideration of the negative spinster, and when once I shall have dealt with her, a few remarks about the characteristics common both to the positive and negative spinster will conclude the chapter. The negative spinster, unlike her positive sister, is not a great conscious sufferer from her condition. She may ail as the result of constitutional debility incidental to the inferior vitality which causes her to be negative; but, from the absence of that element in her life which consummates a woman’s destiny, she will not be conscious of suffering very severely.