II

THE WRECKED FOUNDATIONS OF DOMESTICITY

"Sense with keenest edge unused
Yet unsteel'd by scathing fire:
Lovely feet as yet unbruised
On the ways of dark desire!"

These words written by a poet to his young son express the longing
which has at times seized all of us, to guard youth from the mass of
difficulties which may be traced to the obscure manifestation of that
fundamental susceptibility of which we are all slow to speak and
concerning which we evade public responsibility, although it brings
its scores of victims into the police courts every morning.

At the very outset we must bear in mind that the senses of youth are
singularly acute, and ready to respond to every vivid appeal. We know
that nature herself has sharpened the senses for her own purposes, and
is deliberately establishing a connection between them and the newly
awakened susceptibility of sex; for it is only through the outward
senses that the selection of an individual mate is made and the
instinct utilized for nature's purposes. It would seem, however, that
nature was determined that the force and constancy of the instinct
must make up for its lack of precision, and that she was totally
unconcerned that this instinct ruthlessly seized the youth at the
moment when he was least prepared to cope with it; not only because
his powers of self-control and discrimination are unequal to the task,
but because his senses are helplessly wide open to the world. These
early manifestations of the sex susceptibility are for the most part
vague and formless, and are absolutely without definition to the youth
himself. Sometimes months and years elapse before the individual mate
is selected and determined upon, and during the time when the
differentiation is not complete--and it often is not--there is of
necessity a great deal of groping and waste.

This period of groping is complicated by the fact that the youth's
power for appreciating is far ahead of his ability for expression.
"The inner traffic fairly obstructs the outer current," and it is
nothing short of cruelty to over-stimulate his senses as does the
modern city. This period is difficult everywhere, but it seems at
times as if a great city almost deliberately increased its perils. The
newly awakened senses are appealed to by all that is gaudy and
sensual, by the flippant street music, the highly colored theater
posters, the trashy love stories, the feathered hats, the cheap
h