ly. He is immune to
superstitious belief in and respect for the mysterious power of
political or economic nostrums to reconstruct human society according to
the Marxian formula.

In rejecting the Marxian hypothesis as superficial and fragmentary, we
do so not because of its so-called revolutionary character, its threat
to the existing order of things, but rather because of its superficial,
emotional and religious character and its deleterious effect upon the
life of reason. Like other schemes advanced by the alarmed and the
indignant, it relies too much upon moral fervor and enthusiasm. To build
any social program upon the shifting sands of sentiment and feeling, of
indignation or enthusiasm, is a dangerous and foolish task. On the other
hand, we should not minimize the importance of the Socialist movement
in so valiantly and so courageously battling against the stagnating
complacency of our conservatives and reactionaries, under whose
benign imbecility the defective and diseased elements of humanity
are encouraged "full speed ahead" in their reckless and irresponsible
swarming and spawning. Nevertheless, as George Drysdale pointed out
nearly seventy years ago;

"... If we ignore this and other sexual subjects, we may do whatever else
we like: we may bully, we may bluster, we may rage, We may foam at
the mouth; we may tear down Heaven with our prayers, we may exhaust
ourselves with weeping over the sorrows of the poor; we may narcotize
ourselves and others with the opiate of Christian resignation; we may
dissolve the realities of human woe in a delusive mirage of poetry and
ideal philosophy; we may lavish our substance in charity, and labor over
possible or impossible Poor Laws; we may form wild dreams of Socialism,
industrial regiments, universal brotherhood, red republics, or
unexampled revolutions; we may strangle and murder each other, we may
persecute and despise those whose sexual necessities force them to break
through our unnatural moral codes; we may burn alive if we please the
prostitutes and the adulterers; we may break our own and our neighbor's
hearts against the adamantine laws that surround us, but not one step,
not one shall we advance, till we acknowledge these laws, and adopt
the only possible mode in which they can be obeyed." These words were
written in 1854. Recent events have accentuated their stinging truth.

(1) Marx: "Capital." Vol. I, p. 675.

(2) Op. cit. pp, 695, 707, 709.