though not in stature, that in length of arm they are inferior though the hands are longer (this has been found alike in Italy and Russia); they have smaller ankles and larger calves, and still larger thighs in proportion to their large calves.  The estimated skull capacity and the skull circumference and diameters are somewhat below the normal, not only when compared with respectable women but also with thieves; there is a tendency to brachycephaly (both in Italy and Russia); the cheek-bones are usually prominent and the jaws developed; the hair is darker than in respectable women though less so than in thieves; it is also unusually abundant, not only on the head but also on the pudenda and elsewhere; the eyes have been found to be decidedly darker than those of either respectable women or criminals.[190]

So far as the evidence goes it serves to indicate that prostitutes tend to approximate to the type which, as was shown in the previous volume, there is reason to regard as specially indicative of developed sexuality.  It is, however, unnecessary to discuss this question until our anthropometrical knowledge of prostitutes is more extended and precise.

3. The Moral Justification of Prostitution.—­There are and always have been moralists—­many of them people whose opinions are deserving of the most serious respect—­who consider that, allowing for the need of improved hygienic conditions, the existence of prostitution presents no serious problem for solution.  It is, at most, they say, a necessary evil, and, at best, a beneficent institution, the bulwark of the home, the inevitable reverse of which monogamy is the obverse.  “The immoral guardian of public morality,” is the definition of prostitutes given by one writer, who takes the humble view of the matter, and another, taking the loftier ground, writes:  “The prostitute fulfils a social mission.  She is the guardian of virginal modesty, the channel to carry off adulterous desire, the protector of matrons who fear late maternity; it is her part to act as the shield of the family.”  “Female Decii,” said Balzac in his Physiologie du Mariage of prostitutes, “they sacrifice themselves for the republic and make of their bodies a rampart for the protection of respectable families.”  In the same way Schopenhauer called prostitutes “human sacrifices on the altar of monogamy.”  Lecky, again, in an oft-quoted passage of rhetoric,[191] may be said to combine both the higher and the lower view of the prostitute’s mission in human society, to which he even seeks to give a hieratic character.  “The supreme type of vice,” he declared, “she is ultimately the most efficient guardian of virtue.  But for her, the unchallenged purity of countless happy homes would be polluted, and not a few who, in the pride of their untempted chastity, think of her with an indignant shudder, would have known the agony of remorse and of despair.  On that one degraded and ignoble form are concentrated the passions that might have filled the world with shame.  She remains, while creeds and civilizations rise and fall, the eternal priestess of humanity, blasted for the sins of the people."[192]