The Social Emergency Part 9

Frequently mental disturbances are a.s.sociated with the phenomenon of menstruation. The most usual symptoms are heightened irritability, hysterical manifestations and depression. Depression is often the only symptom; to some girls the premonitory "blues" signify the approach of the period. Occasionally we encounter the reverse, an excessive stimulation and feeling of well-being and strength. There is some loss in the power of concentration. In normal cases, however, this loss is less than many people suppose it to be. La.s.situde and a feeling of general debility are confined chiefly to the anaemic cases.

The mental symptoms clear up as the physical condition is improved, aided by a sensible att.i.tude toward the whole process. Often girls who suffer some pain live through the whole month in dread of the period. This att.i.tude should be changed, by lessening the pain and by psychic therapy.

Psychic therapy has proved successful in obstinate cases.

The girl who suffers considerably from any of these disorders at the monthly period should be relieved from the strain of examinations, the cla.s.sroom, and lessons which must be learned, although mental hygiene requires that her mind be kept active and her interests in quiet pleasures stimulated. She should not be left to introspection and morbidness or to the sickly sentimental thoughts often recommended for her. This alone would cause her to exhibit some of the so-called "phenomena" of adolescence. Many of these phenomena are abnormal and are traceable to low physical vitality and lack of strong mental interests. The menstrual period should not be attended by pain or discomfort; nor should our girls be brought up to regard it as a time of sickness. When our girls are taught that normal girls experience no indisposition at this time, they will not be resigned to pain. The high-school life of the girl below the average in physical vitality cannot be regulated to her advantage in a co-educational school. Cities should maintain girls' high schools, taught by women teachers, for all girls upon whom the stress and strain of compet.i.tion with normal individuals would react unfavorably. In the majority of cases, menstrual pain in girls is due to nerve tension, anaemia and poor circulation, improper clothing, and mental att.i.tude. The girls who experience no pain are those who have led an active out-of-door life and have never stopped playing.

The character and arrangement of a girl's clothing is one of the most important matters in her whole regimen. Clothing may neutralize the beneficial effects of her otherwise hygienic habits. The long-continued even though light pressure of the corset--and it is seldom light--interferes with the free circulation of the blood. The alteration in intro-abdominal pressure is conducive to misplacements of abdominal and pelvic organs; the anterior pressure on the iliac bones, the result of the modern long hip corset, is a fruitful source of partial separation of sacro-iliac joints--the cause of many backaches. Respiration is limited, the free play of abdominal muscles is prevented, constipation is promoted, and digestion is impaired. The strain on muscles and nerves caused by high-heeled shoes is a prolific source of headache and backache and reduced efficiency. Women have no conception how greatly their susceptibility to fatigue is increased and their total efficiency reduced by their methods of dress. The pity is that the majority will not learn unless the decrees of fas.h.i.+on change.

The hygienic problems of girls in industry will largely disappear when it becomes a matter of common knowledge that industrial efficiency is dependent upon physical efficiency. The physical efficiency of the worker cannot be maintained at its highest standard when the period allotted to rest is too short to allow the body to rebuild its tissues and dispose of the toxic products of fatigue. All activity must be balanced by rest. If this equilibrium between expenditure and income is disturbed, exhaustion ensues. If long continued, it results in permanent impairment of health.

The organism poisoned by its own toxic products is incapable of productive effort and the output will steadily diminish as the fatigue increases. The present long working day causes a progressive diminution in the vitality of the worker, defeats its own end, and leaves the girl weak in the face of temptations.

The housing of unmarried girls is a very serious question. Homes for working-girls require skillful management and a matron of insight and sympathy. The bedrooms may be small, but well lighted and ventilated.

There should be a sunny dining-room, a library, several small parlors, attractively furnished, a gymnasium which could be used for dancing, shower baths, and an a.s.sembly room for concerts, lectures, and moving pictures. This should be in charge of a trained social leader who would direct entertainments and stimulate wholesome interests. With an establishment of this kind we should not find so many of our girls on the streets or seeking diversion in cheap theaters and dance halls. When girls are able to live,--not simply exist in the deadening monotony of alternation between work and sleep,--their heightened mental activity, interest, and enthusiasm will prove a valuable a.s.set to employers.

One of the chief requisites of the mental training of girls is a knowledge, supplied at the right time and in the right way, of the fundamental principles of reproduction. With such knowledge the girl's mind will not be distracted by curiosity, or become morbid, when, instead of intelligent response, the girl meets with evasions and attempted concealments. She should not receive this knowledge in the form of isolated facts, but as a correlated part of a great whole to be a.s.similated gradually. The girl who is trained in this way will understand and accept human reproduction as a natural process.

Questionnaires show that a majority of girls hear the facts of reproduction at the age of seven or eight, a few younger, and a few at the age of ten,--almost none at a later age. The majority hear these facts from children a year or two older, a few from their mothers, and the rest from books. A large number experience a feeling of disgust which remains with them until they receive better information. Their questions disclose a depth of ignorance and misconception which is appalling.

Girls, at the age of twelve, thirteen, or fourteen, should have presented to them a course in physiology which includes the anatomy and hygiene of the reproductive organs. This is carefully omitted from present-day secondary-school textbooks. This course should use charts, pictures, and models. The significance of menstruation, the hygiene of the period, and the causes and prevention of pain should be explained. Under the hygiene of the period, the daily bath should be urged, with caution against chills, in which lies the only possibility of injury. The fertilization of the ovum and cell division may be described by use of the blackboard and embryological models of the later stages of development. The forces which bring about labor can be explained without unduly stressing the attending pain.

The course would be incomplete without a discussion of the necessity of careful selection in marriage from the eugenic standpoint. The perils and results of the venereal diseases should be told simply and frankly. The instruction in eugenics, like that in reproduction, should be progressive and indirect, at least up to the age of seventeen or eighteen years. Again it may be correlated with plant life by pointing out the beauty of strong, hardy plants and their relation to the seeds. Children can be taught to save the seeds of the most beautiful blossoms for the following year.

Instruction can be continued with the lower animals. The child will then grow up with the idea that strength and vigor and freedom from disease are desirable qualities, and must exist in the parent if they are to exist in the offspring. The idea can be readily carried over to the human family.

At the age of seventeen or eighteen, the influence of heredity and the effects of the racial poisons should be fully explained, and emphasis laid upon qualities necessary for racial betterment.

For our girls the first need is a sounder physical organism, which can be attained only through the systematic continuance of physical activities through childhood and girlhood; the second need is sounder mental interests, which can be attained only through the systematic guidance of the mental activities throughout childhood and girlhood; and the third need is instruction in laws of reproduction.

CHAPTER XI

MORAL AND RELIGIOUS PHASES

_By Norman Frank Coleman_

Personal and social hygiene in matters of s.e.x are, in very important ways, dependent upon moral and religious training. On the other hand, morals and religion are in important ways dependent upon forces set free by the growth and activity of s.e.x instincts and powers. One of the most significant facts in modern social progress is its recognition of this interdependence of mind and body. We have learned that physical health depends upon peace of mind, hopefulness, courage, and many other things that have seemed in the past to be purely mental or spiritual; and we have learned also that the character of people and the spirit in which they do their work depend upon their health, upon conditions of food and warmth and shelter, things which in the past have been regarded as affecting only the physical man. It is now somewhat out of date to set physical conditions over against moral and religious; every great human problem is more and more clearly seen in this day to involve all these conditions in its rise, and to require thoughtful consideration of them all for its solution. As we face the problems of s.e.x, we must recognize the importance of fresh air, exercise, wholesome food, clean cups and clean towels, and we must also recognize the importance of clean thoughts and high purposes.

We must know clearly the facts of biological and medical science, and with them in mind we must touch the springs of conduct in affection and imagination. Our aim must be to achieve that mastery over the forces of life finely expressed by Browning's Rabbi ben Ezra: "Nor soul helps flesh more, now, than flesh helps soul."

We may consider, first, how, in matters of s.e.x, flesh helps soul; second, how soul helps flesh; and third, how in normal childhood and youth soul and flesh grow together in mutual help.

The first great outstanding fact is that the physical powers of s.e.x reach maturity in the same years in which the moral and religious instincts are greatly quickened. If we recall our youth, we must realize that, in the years between twelve and twenty, our lives were greatly disturbed and perplexed, and also greatly exalted and inspired by desires and impulses partly toward the opposite s.e.x and partly toward the service of G.o.d and our fellows. In the normal adolescent boy or girl there is a powerful expanding and enriching of s.e.x thoughts and desires and purposes. There is also a rapid development of social sympathy and pa.s.sion; the revolutionary movements of all lands are recruited from those who like Sh.e.l.ley have in their youth vowed,--

"I will be wise, And just, and free, and mild, if in me lies Such power, for I grow weary to behold The selfish and the strong still tyrannize Without reproach or check."

And there is a wonderful flowering of the young life in religious feeling and aspiration; a large majority of religious conversions take place in adolescence.

We can scarcely escape the conviction that these are not different awakenings, but rather different phases of the one great awakening of the young life as it prepares for the tasks and responsibilities of manhood and womanhood. The part that s.e.x development plays in this awakening has been variously stressed by different special students of the physiology and psychology of adolescence. Some scientists have not hesitated to give it first place and to treat social pa.s.sion and religious enthusiasm as secondary manifestations of s.e.x energy.[59] However that may be, we know that each speaks naturally in terms of the other. The religious mystic of the Middle Ages was devoted to the Divine Lover or the Heavenly Lady, and the modern revolutionary is _wedded_ to the Cause. On the other hand, the lover naturally adopts the language of religion to express his devotion to the lady of his heart. The water-tight compartment theory of life is in these days thoroughly discredited. We know that the various powers of soul and body are related and interdependent, and we feel sure that the developing powers of s.e.x do have very vital relation to developing powers of moral purpose and religious aspiration. In support of this relation we recall the unfortunate effects upon the character of those who by chance or the barbarity of men have been des.e.xed in childhood. We must allow for other factors at work here, yet the clearly established facts of the stunting of mental and moral growth in des.e.xed children reinforce our own experience and observation, and indicate that the energies that are developed with s.e.x and maturity are largely available for moral and religious growth. The youth with full s.e.x consciousness and impulse is normally the youth of abundant energy for moral and religious activity. It seems, therefore, quite fundamental to the right understanding of s.e.x that we consider the body, not the enemy of the soul, but its friend; not a clog upon the spiritual growth of boy and girl advancing into manhood and womanhood, but an important source of energy for the upward climb.

When we turn to the second part of our discussion and ask how in matters of s.e.x soul helps flesh, the need and the fact are clearer and perhaps more urgent. Dante found the souls of the l.u.s.tful in the second circle of h.e.l.l, driven hither and thither by warring winds,--

"The stormy blast of h.e.l.l With restless fury drives the spirits on, Whirled round and dashed amain with sore annoy."

Here we have clear recognition of the two great characters of s.e.x impulse, its violence and its fitfulness. In the one character it needs to be subdued that it may not destroy; in the other it needs to be directed that it may build up.

As we look back through history, and as we look abroad through our land and through all civilized lands, one of the most conspicuous facts concerning the powers of s.e.x is their frightful destructiveness. The spectacle of wasted manhood and womanhood, of depleted powers in body, mind, and soul, is in history and in present society appalling. It is so oppressive that it has driven many thoughtful men and women to despair.

Men otherwise hopeful and purposeful here become gloomy and fatalistic; they have no hope that l.u.s.t will ever be effectively controlled.

Such pessimism, however, contradicts the history as well as the instincts of the race. In the face of great evils there have always been those who would sit down in discouragement despair; every great destructive force in human history has daunted some men to the point of inactivity. Yet the evils have been controlled. Ignorant and fearful people have said, "This thing is beyond human power; it is useless for us to struggle against fate." Yet men of vision and of courage have struggled and won. No man of moral pa.s.sion and religious purpose can adopt an att.i.tude of pa.s.sive submission to the forces of destruction. We can admit no necessary evil, or the battle of human progress is lost. We ask ourselves soberly, therefore, how this tremendous outrush of destructive energy may be controlled. The answer is plain. Men have by the agency of fire itself constructed the means by which fire is controlled and domesticated; they have turned disease against itself, and by the agency of ant.i.toxins have conquered it; they are learning to arouse and organize the fighting spirit of men against its own most ancient and fearful expression and are enlisting soldiers of peace in a war against war. Even so the race depends upon the higher affections for control of the lower, and l.u.s.t is controlled by love. I talked once to a young man in college who had given himself to s.e.xual vice when he had been in high school; until a year before I spoke with him, he had supposed that virtually all men were and must be s.e.xually indulgent. For twelve months he had kept himself clean. I inquired why and how. He replied simply that he had fallen in love with a young woman and wished to marry her. His former course now seemed to him shameful and unmanly. l.u.s.t yielding to love! In one of his sonnets to the woman who afterward became his wife, Edmund Spenser says:--

"You frame my thoughts and fas.h.i.+on me within: You stop my tongue and teach my heart to speak: You calm the storm that pa.s.sion did begin: Strong through your cause, but by your virtue weak."

In our own experience, as far as we have achieved victory in our own bodies and minds over our baser pa.s.sions, we have achieved it by the power of the higher affections. It is a fact of common experience that love calms the storm that pa.s.sion did begin. So Spenser's lady strengthened pa.s.sion by her charm, but weakened it by her virtue.

Nor is this the only higher affection that, in the practical experience of men, has controlled and transformed animal pa.s.sion. Thousands of fully s.e.xed men have, through the centuries, turned their bodily and mental energies so fully to devoted service for G.o.d and their fellows as to rise above the clamoring demands of physical appet.i.te, in the vigorous terms of the New Testament making themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of G.o.d's sake.

This is a hard saying, and the experience it treats of must always be confined to a small number of men; yet it goes far toward demonstrating a general possibility, and it should effectively dispose of the "necessity"

argument, by which men often excuse their vicious practices.

One thing more should be said on this subject of control. Not only are the higher, more spiritual affections the most effective masters of the lower; they are the _only_ effective masters. Public reprobation can do much, but it is ineffectual with large numbers of relatively unattached members of society, and it is impotent against secret vice. Motives of cautious fear are always weak with full-blooded and generous youth, and they are likely to become weaker with all men as medical science discovers ways to prevent or escape the most obviously fearful consequences of s.e.xual license.

A familiar phrase comes to my mind, as no doubt it comes to yours: "The expulsive power of the higher affections"; yet I think that phrase is not quite suitable. It is not a question of expulsion. It is not wholly a question of control; it is mainly a question of direction. What we need to-day with boys and girls for the solving of the s.e.x problems is to direct those energies, which in their false direction are destructive, into right and healthful ways; that is, we need to socialize and elevate that affection, which in baser forms has aspects of ugly animalism.

As one of the solutions of the problem of control it has been proposed to separate the s.e.xes in the adolescent years. From my point of view, this would defeat our object. In the a.s.sociation of boys and girls during the adolescent period, we may enlist the higher affections for the control and the direction of the powers that are set free by s.e.x impulses developed in that very period of life.

What happens in the experience of the normal boy? In this period of early adolescence he finds within himself a wonderful quickening of mind,--impulses, feelings, longings that he does not understand. These impulses, feelings, longings, perplex him, it may be for years. They reach out vaguely, blindly toward the opposite s.e.x, sometimes in a perverted way, but oftener naturally and honestly. Then the young man falls in love.

At once his more or less vague, cloudy, incoherent, formless feelings and purposes are concentrated, directed, and fixed in devotion to a young woman whom he idealizes, almost deifies. That is the first stage in the natural directing and forming of s.e.x powers and impulses toward social, moral, and religious ends. Of course the young man may discover, after a while, that the first object of his fancy is not so angelic as he thought.

By and by his fancy changes and may rove to several other maidens before he reaches maturity; but each successive experience, if he is true to his better self, concentrates his affections and directs them, until, if he is fortunate, in the course of time he finds his true mate and enters upon marriage. He is now fairly equipped for what most of us know to be a long course in the discipline of the selfish, the personal, the more or less brute desires and ambitions of man. Here he learns to subject himself, his own comfort, his own ends, his own ambitions, to the good of his wife and her happiness, to the good of his children and the satisfaction of their needs. Then, more and more, after having concentrated the powers of his spirit through faithful courts.h.i.+p and through happy marriage and fatherhood, the man is able to diffuse these same energies through many channels, for the protection of all sorts and conditions of women and children. The man is now a citizen, a member of society, with developed powers of social sympathy, of social energy. How has he developed these powers? Not by any supposition that the early s.e.x instincts he felt in his boyhood were wholly animal and must be atrophied by disuse, but by gathering and directing them into the right channels. Direction, like control, depends upon enlightened, purposeful, persistent love.

In the third place, we may consider how, in matters of s.e.x, the flesh and the soul may grow together in mutual help. The essential facts and the vital importance of the s.e.x life appeal to the developing boy or girl in four great relations, in relation to father and mother, in relation to the strength and grace of his or her own body and mind, in relation to his or her future family, and in relation to society in general. These appeals come in successive periods and open the way to healthful instruction and guidance from childhood up to manhood and womanhood.

s.e.x questions first arise in the child's mind in connection with parenthood. The first thing a little boy or girl needs to know is that the young life is sheltered and fed during long months in the mother's body, and that the father had a share in that life. Is it not amazing that in this twentieth century we find many girls twelve years old and over who do not know that their father had any share in starting their lives? I knew of a girl nineteen years old, a student in college, who did not know that a man had any essential part in bringing children into the world, but supposed, when any question of illegitimate childbirth was raised, that possibly G.o.d punished a bad woman by sending her a baby before she was married. It is little short of criminal that many girls are allowed to reach adolescence with no s.e.x thought or image clearly in their minds except such as they have received directly or indirectly from animals. If boys and girls knew from the beginning that a part of the father's life and a part of the mother's life united to form the beginning of their lives, the question of s.e.x would begin on a plane where there were religious, moral, and spiritual a.s.sociations, and an atmosphere of love and holiness. These young people could then see the facts of s.e.x clearly instead of through the mists of prurient fancy and suggestion as they see them now.[60] The boy and girl who know these two tremendous facts of the nurturing care of the mother before birth, and the cooperation of the father and mother in the beginning of life, are fortified against the princ.i.p.al moral and spiritual dangers that they are to face in the future.

The next information and guidance needed by our boys and girls concerns the influence of s.e.x upon their own development. The objection is continually raised that it is not well for little children to have s.e.x thoughts emphasized in their minds. But at present no boy or girl grows up and plays among other children, or hears talk on the streets, or goes to work in factory or store, without hearing these facts emphasized day by day, emphasized unhealthily and distorted shamefully. We propose simply to have the emphasis s.h.i.+fted and lightened for it will be lightened if the facts are given truly and in right relations. Boys and girls should learn, at the same time they are learning facts of nutrition, excretion, respiration, and circulation of the blood, those facts regarding s.e.x which are most important for healthy growth of mind and body. They should know that the organs of reproduction have a definite relation to the natural and healthful development of the full powers of their bodies in future years; that internal secretions of these organs coming into the blood help to build up bones and muscles, help to make their nerve fibers active and vigorous, help to form their brains, and help to equip them for manly strength and womanly grace in the years that are to come. These are very simple matters. These facts of s.e.x can be conveyed by just a few sentences of clear, considerate, wise information at the right time, in relation to the other facts of bodily development.

Considering now the period of p.u.b.erty, we find additional needs, for no boy or girl reaches p.u.b.erty, under ordinary conditions, without knowing that it brings the possibility of fatherhood and motherhood, brings the possibility of that process that we call fertilization, in which the life of plants and animals begins. The boy or girl who reaches this age has a right to know what fertilization means, and what fertilization implies; has a right to the simple biological facts which will tell him the relation between the life of the parents and the life of the child, the mysterious relation in body and mind that we call heredity. The beginning of the socializing of s.e.x energy and s.e.x power depends upon recognition of the fact that this power that develops in the young man and young woman at p.u.b.erty is not to be used for selfish gratification, is not primarily a source of pleasure, but has a very direct relation to the health, intelligence, and happiness of others. This relation may be enforced by a simple study of succeeding generations of flowers and the ways in which forms, colors, and sizes originate and are handed down from generation to generation in wonderful variety. Or it may be ill.u.s.trated from an observation of the beginnings of s.e.x in infusoria; how tiny animals in stagnant water grow to full size and each divides simply into two to form a new generation; how this simple as.e.xual process continuing for several generations results in growing weakness and old age, steadily decreasing size, steadily decreasing vitality until there comes a time when one infusorian unites with another. There s.e.x begins. That union of two individuals is required to restore youth, to refresh vitality and energy, and to produce greater variety in the forms of life. When a boy or girl knows these simple facts, he is better able to understand the power of reproduction than he can possibly be if they are not before him, or if all he has heard has been ceaseless reiteration of the pleasures of selfish indulgence of s.e.x appet.i.te.

Finally, when the boy and the girl come into later adolescence and face manhood and womanhood, they are ready to know some of the larger social aspects of s.e.x. They are ready to know of the diseases brought on by perverted s.e.x habits; of the frightful waste of those who give themselves to licentiousness, the frightful waste of strength and youthful energy not only in those that actually go down, but in those that survive. More than that, seeking right relations of themselves to society, they need to know the social aspects of s.e.x. The young man needs to know what it means for a woman to bear a child; he needs to know the social and economic dependence of the pregnant woman and of the young mother, so that he may realize what the power of fatherhood means in the actual work of society.

I cannot imagine any man talking glibly of the necessary evil, or of man's inability to control s.e.x pa.s.sions, if he knows the social facts of s.e.x.

Any young man who knows even a part of the burden his mother bore for him, if he has a spark of manhood in his being, is surely fortified against temptation to selfish indulgence. If, beyond that, he can see the relation of the home to society, the relative steadiness and dependability of a worker with a wife and children, who bears the home burdens in a man's way, as compared with the floating, homeless wanderer who walks our streets; if he knows these central facts and the dependence of the home upon the faithfulness of the man and the presence of the man, if he has a spark of patriotism in his heart, he must realize in his thought and in his practice the necessity for the socialization of that pa.s.sion which, though it begin in individual and selfish forms, issues in such fateful social consequences.

The solution of this great, urgent, pressing problem, which we are feeling the weight of more and more in these years of careful investigation of our social conditions, will come in frankly recognizing the beginnings upon which the whole s.e.x life in mind and body is based, and in transforming fundamentally important animal instincts and desires into higher affections, humanizing them for the sake of the loved one, for the sake of family, for the sake of the social brotherhood and sisterhood in which we are members.

My closing word is one which seems to me most significant of the true, the beautiful, the victorious way out of so much discouragement and so much crime,--that is the word "consecration." That word includes two essential ideas, the ideas of sacredness and cooperation. The problems of s.e.x will never be solved until the sacredness of s.e.x is recognized, for s.e.x is vitally and indissolubly bound up with the two greatest facts that you and I know. The greatest fact of the organized world around us is life, the greatest fact of the spiritual world into which we lift our souls is love, and the beginnings of life and the beginnings of love are in s.e.x. No boy or girl will readily understand what life means except as he has some clear, wise teaching about s.e.x; no boy or girl will fully understand what love means except through recognition of the dignity and worth and purity of the fundamental facts and powers of s.e.x.

Who shall give this enlightenment? I think it must be clear that this enlightenment cannot be given by the very young and inexperienced person, that the facts can be rightly given only by some person who knows their sacredness for himself or herself. They can be given best by a mature person who has seen and felt what they mean. In the long run, I have no doubt that our boys and girls will get the information that they must have from their parents, for the father and the mother are the best qualified to give it. I have named both the father and the mother, for the solution of our problem is not only in knowing the sacredness of s.e.x, it is also in working together for the elevation of s.e.x life. We shall not be able, we men, in the future, to sit down and say, "Oh, well, John will learn from his mother"; "Mary's mother will make that clear to her"; "Their mother does these things." It will not be possible for the socializing of the s.e.x instincts and the ripening of the s.e.x powers to be made clear to young people except as men and women both recognize the sacredness of the s.e.x relation and undertake to make things clear to boys and girls. Men must give up their selfish indifference to evil conditions, and women--some women--must give up the bitterness and hardness that come into their hearts and their faces when they think of the suffering that their s.e.x has endured at the hands of man. This is not a problem for one s.e.x. It cannot be solved by either half of the great whole of humanity. We know this to be true in our personal life; it is equally true in our social life. It is only by the girding-up of the whole spirit of man to go forth and meet his duty as a lover, as a husband, as a father, and it is only by the girding-up of all the powers of the woman to lead and to help, that the family is organized. In this great human family of ours the man and the woman in days that are coming will cooperate to remove from our midst the blackest and most fearful perversion of the natural powers of our race. We do not believe in sitting down idly before this problem and saying, "It has always been, it always will be." In this great day of moral and spiritual progress, with powers that we have inherited from our forefathers in this land and other lands, we know that there is no necessary evil. We are learning what the evil of s.e.x is, and how it arises, and we are beginning to use the forces at hand for its destruction. Conscience is kindling and determination is hardening among our people that this thing shall cease to be. The ape and the tiger shall yet die from our midst, and man's spirit shall triumph in his flesh.

FOOTNOTES:

[59] A. Forel, _The s.e.xual Question_, chap. XII, "Religion and s.e.xual Life"; William James, _Varieties of Religious Experience_, chap. I; especially the first footnote.