m the original edition. But even so, the book by no means
pretends to preach revolutionary doctrines, or even doctrines of any
novelty. All I design by it is to set down in more or less plain form
certain ideas that practically every civilized man and woman holds
in petto, but that have been concealed hitherto by the vast mass of
sentimentalities swathing the whole woman question. It is a question of
capital importance to all human beings, and it deserves to be discussed
honestly and frankly, but there is so much of social reticence, of
religious superstition and of mere emotion intermingled with it that
most of the enormous literature it has thrown off is hollow and useless.
I point for example, to the literature of the subsidiary question of
woman suffrage. It fills whole libraries, but nine tenths of it is
merely rubbish, for it starts off from assumptions that are obviously
untrue and it reaches conclusions that are at war with both logic
and the facts. So with the question of sex specifically. I have read,
literally, hundreds of volumes upon it, and uncountable numbers of
pamphlets, handbills and inflammatory wall-cards, and yet it leaves the
primary problem unsolved, which is to say, the problem as to what is to
be done about the conflict between the celibacy enforced upon millions
by civilization and the appetites implanted in all by God. In the
main, it counsels yielding to celibacy, which is exactly as sensible as
advising a dog to forget its fleas. Here, as in other fields, I do not
presume to offer a remedy of my own. In truth, I am very suspicious of
all remedies for the major ills of life, and believe that most of
them are incurable. But I at least venture to discuss the matter
realistically, and if what I have to say is not sagacious, it is at
all events not evasive. This, I hope, is something. Maybe some later
investigator will bring a better illumination to the subject.

It is the custom of The Free-Lance Series to print a paragraph or two
about the author in each volume. I was born in Baltimore, September 12,
1880, and come of a learned family, though my immediate forebears were
business men. The tradition of this ancient learning has been upon me
since my earliest days, and I narrowly escaped becoming a doctor
of philosophy. My father's death, in 1899, somehow dropped me into
journalism, where I had a successful career, as such careers go. At
the age of 25 I was the chief editor of a daily newspaper i