THE INFLUENCE OF SOCIAL CONDITIONS


Let me begin this chapter with a query. Is not all the trouble in the
modern world over the sexual element in life the evidence of something
abnormal and distorted in the very constitution of modern society? Or
put differently, would it not turn out that if only men and women were
set in just and healthy conditions, given real education and sufficient
means of self-expression, the sexual problem would be found very
largely to have solved itself? I cannot offer any dogmatic answer to
that query, though I have my own conviction that history will one day
answer it with an unmistakable affirmative. What we can do even now is
to notice that every maladjustment in our present social life tends to
increase the amount of failure in true sex morality. All our
callousness about social evils revenges itself upon us by confronting
us with an increasingly menacing problem in this connection, and all
honest service devoted to the increase of social health of any sort is
also helping our moral progress.

And I wish to amplify this point because I hope some at least of the
readers of this book will find themselves asking eagerly what can be
done in view of the seriousness of sexual evil. If those who go wrong
in sex matters are spoiling their lives at the core, which of us would
not like to do something to guard the young from wandering, and to help
to clean the modern world! Therefore it is a real satisfaction to be
able to reply, as I do with complete conviction, "Anything you do to
help to bring social justice and general health any nearer is also
helping towards the solution of this one problem."