cate his doctrine,
the more readily, and maintain that humanity needs these ideas as
much today as when M. Jules Lemaitre wrote his late introduction to
Michelet's _L'Amour_. He said: "_Il ne parait pas, apres quarante ans
passes, que les choses aillent mieux, ni que le livre de Michelet
ait rien perdu de son a-propos_." Twenty years more have elapsed
and things have not yet become much better. Frank sex talks like Dr.
Long's teaching are as a-propos today as was Michelet's book when it
was written, or when, after forty years had passed M. Lemaitre wrote
his introduction.

Idealism is right, and we all approve it; so much so, that many of us
cannot see that ultra-idealism, extremism in right, (it is foolish
to attempt to attain anything better than the best) may be wrong.
Undoubtedly, entire devotion to the material and physical, is also
wrong; but we never must lose sight of the palpable fact that, unless
we have a proper, stable, natural, well-regulated physical or
material foundation, we must fall short of all ideals. Proper physical
adjustments enable the realization of realizable ideals. Unrealizable
ideals are chimeras pursued into futurity, while a world that should
be human and happy waits in vice and misery. I gather that Dr. Long
believes that reducing this vice and misery, and increasing human
happiness and improving health are suitable works with which to
companion a faith in the Arbiter of our destinies.

If thus he develops his idea of the integrity of the universe, I agree
with him fully. His book, since it delineates the numerous details of
a normal sex life, can be sold, thanks to our prudish public, only to
the profession. I believe it should go to the larger public as it has
gone formerly to his smaller community.

In spite of imperfect ideals the Orient has endured, while we of the
Occident are fast becoming decadent. We, by learning something of
the art of love, and of the natural life of married people, from the
Hindoos, may perpetuate our civilization. They, by adopting the best
of our transcendentalism, may reach higher development than we yet
have attained.

The time has come for a book like this to command the attention of
medical men, since now an awakened public demands from them, as the
conservers of life and the directors of physiological living, explicit
directions in everything pertaining to the physician's calling, not
omitting the intimate, intricate, long taboo and disdained detai