ters like thin glass, with a very slight blow, when it comes
in contact with the emotions. Thus I am driven back to the truth,
established already in an earlier essay, that the one sure way to
deliver the young from evil is to lessen their temptations.

You see hidden sin is always more attractive than open sin; for one
thing, it is easier to begin, and the beginning of sin is usually
drifting; secrecy also supplies adventure, and the excitement that is
desired by the young so passionately in the dullness of life.

IV

There never was an age when so many diverse types of young women
flourished, sometimes they are rather puzzling to the middle-aged
observer.[200:1] With so many of them there is a kind of forced levity,
a self-consciousness that prevents them from being either simple or
serious. All the clever ones seem to think that by talking in
generalizations, you can avert the plain issues of life. Their
conversation is full of meaningless remarks, such as "the bondage of
sex," "the superstition of chastity," "freedom in the marriage bond,"
"the sacrifice of women," "stifling convention," and so on, which they
go on repeating because that is the terminology of their set. They have
no conception of realities at all, only of abstract situations.
Impossible to tell what are their pseudo-emotions; a sort of sterile
intellectualism, shown in their shirking of sex responsibility. They
wish to ignore the real difficulty of marriage; they accept love, but
only with conditions. The one thing they face practically is work, and
the two activities don't conflict in their estimates, because their
minds are too choked with conceptions to admit facts. They are faithful
to their training by G. Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells, in thinking that
by stating a situation and arguing about it, you can shirk the need of
dealing with it.

Some women want to wipe the sex-side of life out. They cannot. They
preach that work and human experience (whatever that may mean) will
weaken sex-desire. It does not. Desires may be inhibited, not destroyed,
corrupting in quietness they wait opportunity to revive, insistent,
clamoring.

Other young women try deliberately to keep love light. Shrewd enough to
understand the heavy claims of serious passion, they prefer affairs of
the senses only; episodes that are a secret detachable part of their
lives. They want love as an experience, and to provide the always
desired excitement, but they want as well