CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

PREFACE vii

I. SEX EDUCATION 3

II. SOCIALISM 71

III. THE INTELLECTUAL UNDERWORLD 113

IV. THOUGHT TRANSFERENCE 141

V. THE MIND OF THE JURYMAN 181

VI. EFFICIENCY ON THE FARM 205

VII. SOCIAL SINS IN ADVERTISING 229

VIII. THE MIND OF THE INVESTOR 253

IX. SOCIETY AND THE DANCE 273

X. NAIVE PSYCHOLOGY 291

PSYCHOLOGY
AND
SOCIAL SANITY

I

SEX EDUCATION

The time is not long past when the social question was understood to
mean essentially the question of the distribution of profit and wages.
The feeling was that everything would be all right in our society, if
this great problem of labour and property could be solved rightly. But
in recent years the chief meaning of the phrase has shifted. Of all
the social questions the predominant, the fundamentally social one,
seems nowadays the problem of sex, with all its side issues of social
evils and social vice. It is as if society feels instinctively that
these problems touch still deeper layers of the social structure. Even
the fights about socialism and the whole capitalistic order do not any
longer stir the conscience of the community so strongly as the grave
concern about the family. All public life is penetrated by sexual
discussions, magazines and newspapers are overflooded with
considerations of the sexual problem, on the stage one play of sexual
reform is pushed off by the next, the pulpit resounds with sermons on
sex, sex education enters into the schools, legislatures and courts
are drawn into this whirl of sexualized public opinion; the
old-fashioned policy of silence has been crushed by a policy of
thundering outcry, which is heard in every home and every nursery.
This loudness of debate is surely an effect of the horror with which
the appalling misery around us is suddenly discovered. All which was
hidden by prudery is disclosed in its viciousness, and this outburst
of indignation is the result. Yet it would never have swollen to this
overwhelming flood if the nation were not convinced that this is the
only way to cause