at the next block his tainted
imagination will have overcome the fear, and with the reckless
confidence that he will know how to protect himself and that he will
have good luck he, too, like the moth, will feel attracted toward the
red light and will turn back. We can prohibit alcohol, but we cannot
prohibit the stimulus to sexual lust. It is always present, and the
selfish desire, made rampant by a society which craves amusement, will
always be stronger than any social argument or any talk of possible
individual danger. The only effective check is the deep inner respect,
and we must teach it to the youth, or the whole nation will have to be
taught it soon by the sterner discipline of history. The genius of
mankind cannot be deceived by philistine phrases about the conspiracy
of silence. The decision to be silent was a solemn pledge to the
historic spirit of human progress, which demands its symbols, its
conventions, and its beliefs. To destroy the harvest of these ideal
values, because some weeds have grown up with them, by breaking down
the dams and allowing the flood of truth-talk to burst in is the great
psychological crime of our day. There is only one hope and salvation:
let us build up the dam again to protect our field for a better
to-morrow.

II

SOCIALISM

The history of socialism has been a history of false prophecies.
Socialism started with a sure conviction that under the conditions of
modern industry the working class must be driven into worse and worse
misery. In reality the development has gone the opposite way. There
are endlessly more workingmen with a comfortable income than ever
before. The prophets also knew surely that the wealth from
manufacturing enterprises would be concentrated with fewer and fewer
men, while history has taken the opposite turn and has distributed the
shares of the industrial companies into hundreds of thousands of
hands. Other prophecies foretold the end of the small farmer, still
others the uprooting of the middle class, others gave the date for the
great crash; and everything would have come out exactly as the
prophets foresaw it, if they had not forgotten to consider many other
factors in the social situation which gave to the events a very
different turn. But it may be acknowledged that the wrong prophesying
was done not only by the socialists, but no less by the spectators. I
myself have to confe