what he now calls his social illusions.

One of the most pathetic social experiments I have known was made by a
young girl, whom I also knew at Paris. She generously determined that
she would have no sex prejudices; and for several years she strove
against the terribly strong social feeling in that regard. Not only
theoretically but practically she persisted in thinking and acting in a
way which the world calls immoral. She wanted to show that a girl could
be good and yet not what the world calls chaste. She did not believe
that sex-relations had anything to do with real morality. In one way,
she has been successful. She is as good now--better--as when she began
her experiment. She is broader and finer and bigger; but she has
suffered. She has been disappointed in her idealism, disappointed in the
way men have met her frank generosity, she has been injured in a worldly
way. Her strongest desires are those of all good women--she deeply wants
the necessary shelter for children and social quiet and pleasure, and
these essentials are denied her because of her idealism. She half feels
this now and is tired and discouraged.

Another woman who has paid heavily for her "social" interests is in
quite a different position. She is married to a man who is also a social
idealist. He is so emotionally occupied with "society" that nature and
life in its more eternal and necessary aspects touch him lightly. He
hardly realises their existence. She tries to follow him in this
direction; strains her woman's nature, which is a large one, to the
uttermost. It is probable that the loss of his child was due to this
idealistic contempt for old wisdom. Not a moment must be lost, not a
thought devoted to anything but the revolution; this necessitated
social activity, and that exclusively. Where was the opportunity for
the quiet development and care of an infant? The children of the
"radicals" are few, and as a rule do not grow up in the best conditions.
This certainly is a terrible sacrifice entailed upon the social
idealist.

Writers in France and in Europe generally are much more interested in
radical ideas of society and politics than they are in this country. The
most distinguished among them are from the American point of view
radical, at least. There is hardly a play of note produced in France or
Germany that does not in some way trench upon modern social problems.
Anatole France is a philosophical anarchist, and so is Octave Misbeau.