individual.

But now since a new great wave of discussion has arisen, and the
sexual problem is stirring the nation, the psychologist's faith in the
unpopular policy puts him into an especially difficult position.
Whenever he brings from his psychological studies arguments which
point to the errors in public prejudices, he can present his facts in
full array. Nothing hinders him from speaking with earnestness against
the follies of hasty and short-sighted methods in every concern of
public life, if he has the courage to oppose the fancies of the day.
But the fight in favour of the policy of silence is different. If he
begins to shout his arguments, he himself breaks that role of silence
which he recommends. He speaks for a conviction, which demands from
him first of all that he shall not speak. The more eagerly he spreads
his science, the more he must put himself in the wrong before his own
conscience. He is thus thrown into an unavoidable conflict. If he is
silent, the cause of his opponents will prosper, and if he objects
with full arguments, his adversaries have a perfect right to claim
that he himself sets a poor example and that his psychology helps
still more to increase that noisy discussion which he denounces as
ruinous to the community. But in this contradictory situation the
circle must be broken somewhere, and even at the risk of adding to the
dangerous tumult which he condemns, the psychologist must break his
silence in order to plead for silence. I shall have to go into all the
obnoxious detail, for if I yielded to my feeling of disgust, my
reticence would not help the cause while all others are shouting. I
break silence in order to convince others that if they were silent,
too, our common social hopes and wishes would be nearer to actual
fulfilment.

But let us acknowledge from the start that we stand before an
extremely complicated question, in which no routine formula can do
justice to the manifoldness of problems. Most of these discussions are
misshaped from the beginning by the effort to deal with the whole
social sex problem, while only one or another feature is seriously
considered. Now it is white slavery, and now the venereal diseases;
now the demands of eugenics, and now the dissipation of boys; now the
influence of literature and drama, and now the effect of sexual
education in home and school; now the medical situation and the
demands of hygiene, and now the moral situation and the demands of