diseases—syphilis and gonorrhea. They are both frightfully infectious and very difficult to cure. These diseases are usually acquired by sex contact with a diseased person, but they can also be gotten by using public drinking cups, towels, water-closets, or in any way by which an infected moist article can come in contact with one's skin. The worst thing about these diseases is that they are such invisible enemies. After the outside appearance of the disease is gone, they often go reaching farther and farther into the body, making awful results that hang on for years. Men who get diseased frequently give the infection to their wives, often causing them to be so ill that surgical operations are necessary, by which their sex organs are so crippled that they can never be mothers; and, worst of all, innocent unborn babies are infected and come into the world sick or deformed or blind.

Men often get these dreadful diseases by having sex relations with women who are called prostitutes or “bad women,” that is, they are women who are not in love with any one, but who make money by selling their sex relations to men who pay for them. Many prostitutes become diseased, and there is, as yet, no way for either them or the men who visit them to be positively safe from infection. But the doctors are making progress in their study of these diseases, and they are finding out how to control and cure them, just as they have in the case of tuberculosis.

But even if presently these venereal diseases, as they are called, can be entirely cured and prevented, prostitution will still remain a thing to hate. For the idea of sex relations between people who do not love each other, who do not feel any sense of belonging to each other, will always be revolting to highly developed, sensitive people.

People's lives grow finer and their characters better, if they have sex relations only with those they love. And those who make the wretched mistake of yielding to the sex impulse alone when there is no love to go with it, usually live to despise themselves for their weakness and their bad taste. They are always ashamed of doing it, and they try to keep it secret from their families and those they respect. You can be sure that whatever people are ashamed to do is something that can never bring them real happiness. It is true that one's sex relations are the most personal and private matters in the world, and they belong just to us and to no one else, but while we may be shy and reserved about them, we are not ashamed.

When two people really love each other, they don't care who knows it. They are proud of their happiness. But no man is ever proud of his connection with a prostitute and no prostitute is ever proud of her business.

Sex relations belong to love, and love is never a business. Love is the nicest thing in the world, but it can't be bought. And the sex side of it is the biggest and most important side of it, so it is the one side of us that we must be absolutely sure to keep in good order and perfect health, if we are going to be happy ourselves or make any one else happy.