al, degrading thing
can exist not one instant after we have declared that it shall perish.

It is no exaggeration to say that Comstockery is the arch enemy of
society. It seeks to make hypocrisy respectable; it would convert
impurity into a basic virtue; it labels ignorance, innocence; it has
legislated knowledge into a crime; and it seeks its perpetuation in the
degradation of an enfeebled human race. And that these are not
over-statements can easily be established to the satisfaction of any
reasonable mind.

The most creditable work ever done by Comstockery was the practical
suppression and elimination of the obscene book; but when that is said,
all is said. How worse than fatuous, how absolutely fiendish that
physician would be deemed who hid the signs of small-pox with paint and
powder and permitted his patient to roam at will among his fellows,
unwarned even of the nature of the fell disease that was devouring his
life. Nay, worse! What if the physician should have himself clothed with
plenary powers and should compel the poor wretch to refrain from making
his case known after he had discovered its nature? But this is precisely
what Comstockery does.

The obscene book was removed from circulation. In other words, the
symptom of the disease was hidden. But was anything done to eliminate
the disease, or to remove its cause? On the contrary, everything
possible was done to perpetuate the disease; everything possible was
done to prevent anyone who had suffered from the disease or who knew
anything about it, from imparting his knowledge. For the disease was
ignorance; ignorance of self, of life, of sex. And not only does
Comstockery strive to perpetuate ignorance, not only does it glorify
ignorance and miscall it innocence, not only does it elevate it into a
virtue, but it has legislated knowledge into a crime. The offence of the
book it had eliminated was not its vicious misinformation, but its use
of sex as a subject. The postoffice has said that any discussion of sex
is obscene and the courts have put one noble old man of over seventy
years into prison at hard labor, and have punished an aged woman
physician in some other way because they sought, in all purity and
right-mindedness, to help their brothers and sisters to a knowledge of
themselves.

It is true that, at last, there is a rift within the lute; or would it
better be called a leak in the sewer? Comstockery has not quite the
standing that it once had. Wh