ability in the man, not because she grasps its value as an idea, but because it is the supporter of the life of the world. She herself works, and is not idle like the prostitute; she is filled with care for the future, and so requires from the man a corresponding practical responsibility, and will not seduce him to pleasure. The prostitute, on the other hand, is most attracted by a careless, idle, dissipated man. A man that has lost self-restraint repels the mother-woman, is attractive to the prostitute. There are women who are dissatisfied with a son that is idle at school; there are others who encourage him. The diligent boy pleases the mother-woman, the idle and careless boy wins approval from the prostitute type. This distinction reaches high up amongst the respectable classes of society, but a salient example of it is seen in the fact that the "bullies" loved by women of the streets are usually criminals. The souteneur is always a criminal, a thief, a fraudulent person, or sometimes even a murderer.
I am almost on the point of saying that, however little woman is to be regarded as immoral (she is only non-moral), prostitution stands in some deep relation with crime, whilst motherhood is equally bound with the opposite tendency. We must avoid regarding the prostitute as the female analogue of the criminal; women, as I have already pointed out, are not criminals; they are too low in the moral scale for that designation. None the less, there is a constant connection between the prostitute type and crime. The great courtesan is comparable with that great criminal, the conqueror, and readily enters into actual relations with him; the petty courtesan entertains the thief and the pickpocket. The mother type is in fact the guardian of the life of the world, the prostitute type is its enemy. But just as the mother is in harmony, not with the soul but with the body, so the prostitute is no diabolic destroyer of the idea, but only a corrupter of empirical phenomena. Physical life and physical death, both of which are in intimate connection with the sexual act, are displayed by the woman in her two capacities of mother and prostitute.
