rice for them and to take in exchange a rapid
increase of sexual vice and of erotic disorderliness. But to fancy
that the liberation of women and the protection of women can be
furthered by the same means is a psychological illusion. The community
which opens the playhouses to the lure of the new dramatic art may
protect 5 per cent. of those who are in danger to-day, but throws 50
per cent. more into abysses. The feminists who see to the depths of
their ideals ought to join full-heartedly the ranks of those who
entirely object to this distribution of the infectious germs of sexual
knowledge.

Some stray support may come to the new movement also from another
side. Some believe that this great emphasis on sexual interests may
intensify aesthetic longings in the American commonwealth. No doubt
this interrelation exists. No civilization has known a great artistic
rise without a certain freedom and joy in sensual life. Prudery always
has made true aesthetic unfolding impossible. Yet if we yielded here,
we would again be pushed away from our real problem. The aesthetic
enthusiast might think it a blessing for the American nation if a
great aesthetic outburst were secured, even by the ruin of moral
standards: a wonderful blossoming of fascinating flowers from a swampy
soil in an atmosphere full of moral miasmas. To be sure, even then it
is very doubtful whether any success could be hoped for, as a
lightness in sexual matters may be a symptom of an artistic age, but
surely is not its cause. The artist may love to drink, but the drink
does not make an artist. An aesthetic community may reach its best when
it is freed from sexual censorship, but throwing the censor out of the
house would not add anything to the aesthetic inspiration of a society
which is instinctively indifferent to the artistic calling. Above all,
the question for us is not whether the sexual overeducation may have
certain pleasant side effects: we ask only how far it succeeds in its
intended chief effect of improving morally the social community.

In fact, neither feminism nor aestheticism could have secured this
indulgence of the community in the new movement, if one more direct
argument had not influenced the conviction of some of our leaders.
They reason around one central thought--namely, that the old policy of
silence, in which they grew up, has been tried and has shown itself
unsuccessful. The horrible dimensions which the social evil has taken,
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