fact that
homosexuality is disgusting to most people is a reason for punishing it
with extreme severity. Yet disgust is a matter of taste, we cannot
properly impart it into our laws; a disgusting person is not necessarily
a criminal person, or we shall have to enact that many inmates of our
hospitals and lunatic asylums be hanged. There is thus a fundamental
inconsistency in the English method of dealing with immorality; it is
made up of opposite views, some of them extreme in contrary directions.
But by virtue of the national tendency to compromise, these conflicting
tendencies work in a fairly harmonious manner. The result is that the
general state of English morality--notwithstanding, and perhaps partly
by reason of, its prudish anxiety to leave unpleasant matters alone--is
at least as satisfactory as that of countries where much more logical
and thorough methods are in favour.

In the United States we see yet another attitude towards immorality. It
is, indeed, related to the English attitude, necessarily so, since the
most ancient and fundamental element of it was carried over to America
by the English Puritans, who cherished in the extreme form alike the
English passion for individualism and the English fervour of religious
idealism. These germs have been too potent for destruction even under
all the new influences of American life. But they are not altogether in
harmony with those influences, and the result has been that the American
attitude towards immorality has sometimes looked rather like a
caricature of the English method. The influx of a vast and racially
confused population with the over-rapid development of urbanization
which has necessarily followed, opens an immense field for idealistic
individualism to attempt reforms. But this individualism has not been
held in check by the English spirit of compromise, which is not a part
of Puritanism, and it has thus tended alike to excess and to impotence.
This result is brought about partly by facilities for individualistic
legislation not voicing the tendencies of the whole population, and
therefore fatally condemned to sterility, and partly by the fact that in
a new and rapidly developed civilization it is impossible to secure an
army of functionaries who may be trusted to deal with the regulation of
delicate and complex moral questions in regard to which the community
is not really agreed. The American police are generally admitted to be
open with special fre