for joy, even with its erotic touch, brings with it many
valuable enrichments of every national life, not least among them the
spreading of the sense of beauty. But what is needed is a wholesome
national self-control by which an antisocial growth of these emotions
will be suppressed. Our present-day American life so far lacks these
conditions for the truly harmonious organization of the new
tendencies. There are many causes for it. The long puritanic past did
not allow that slow European training in aesthetic and harmless social
enjoyments. Moreover, the widespread wealth, the feeling of democratic
equality, the faintness of truly artistic interests in the masses, all
reinforce the craving for the mere tickling of the senses, for
amusement of the body, for vaudeville on the stage and in life. The
sexual element in this wave of enjoyment becomes reinforced by the
American position of the woman outside of the family circle. Her
contact with men has been multiplied, her right to seek joy in every
possible way has become the corollary of her new independence, her
position has become more exposed and more dangerous. And in addition
to all this, the chief factor, which alone would be sufficient to give
to the situation a threatening aspect: American educationalists do not
believe in discipline. As long as the community was controlled by the
moral influence of puritanism, the lack of training in subordination
under social authority and obedient discipline was without danger,
while it strengthened the spirit of political liberty. But to-day, in
the period of the new antipuritanic life, the lack of discipline in
education means an actual threat to the social safety.

In such a situation what can be more fraught with dangers than to
abolish the policy of silence and to uphold the policy of talking and
talking about sexual matters with those whose minds were still
untouched by the lure. It means to fill the atmosphere in which the
growing adolescent moves with sultry ideas, it means to distort the
view of the social surroundings, it means to stir up the sexual
desires and to teach children how to indulge in them without immediate
punishment. Just as in a community of graft and corruption the
individual soon loses the finer feeling for honesty, and crime
flourishes simply because every one knows that nobody expects anything
better, so in a community in which sexual problems are the lessons of
the youth and the dinner talk of the a