by men of science, point to an influence not brought about directly by the reproductive cells. White women who have borne a child to a black man, are said if they bear children afterwards to white men, to have retained enough impression from the first mate to show an effect on the subsequent children. All such facts, grouped under the names of "telegony," "germinal infection," and so on, although disputed by scientists, speak for my view. And so also the motherly woman, throughout her whole life, is impressed by lovers, by voices, by words, by inanimate things. All the influences that come to her she turns to the purpose of her being, to the shaping of her child, and the "actual" father has to share his paternity with perhaps other men and many other things.
The woman is impregnated not only through the genital tract but through every fibre of her being. All life makes an impression on her and throws its image on her child. This universality, in the purely physical sphere, is analagous to genius.
It is quite different with the prostitute. Whilst the maternal woman turns the whole world, the love of her lover, and all the impressions that she receives to the purposes of the child, the prostitute absorbs everything for herself. But just as she has this absorbing need of the man, so the man can get something from her which he fails to find in the badly dressed, tasteless, pre-occupied maternal type. Something within him requires pleasure, and this he gets from the daughters of joy. Unlike the mother, these think of the pleasures of the world, of dancing, of dressing, of theatres and concerts, of pleasure-resorts. They know the use of gold, turning it to luxury instead of to comfort, they flame through the world, making all its ways a triumphant march for their beautiful bodies.
The prostitute is the great seductress of the world, the female Don Juan, the being in the woman that knows the art of love, that cultivates it, teaches it, and enjoys it.
Very deep-seated differences are linked with what I have been describing. The mother-woman craves for respect-
