sight of things to justify research, venture upon this sinister seeming
wilderness of speculation, and I think, too, it is very probable the
courageous persistent explorer will end at last not so very remote from
the starting-point, but above it, as it were, on a crest that will give
a wider view, reaching over many things that now confine the lower
vision. But these are perilous paths, it must always be remembered.
This is no public playground. One may distrust the conventional code,
and one may leave it in thought, long before one is justified in
leaving it either in expressed opinion or in act. We are social
animals; we cannot live alone; manifestly from the nature of the
question, here, at any rate, we must associate and group. For all who
find the accepted righteousness not good enough or clear enough for
them, there is the chance of an ironical destiny. We must look well to
our company, as we come out of the city of the common practice and kick
its dust from our superior soles. There is an abominable riff-raff gone
into those thickets for purposes quite other than the discovery of the
right thing to do, for quite other motives than our high intellectual
desire. There are ugly rebels and born rascals, cheats by instinct, and
liars to women, swinish unbelievers who would compromise us with their
erratic pursuit of a miscellaneous collection of strange fancies and
betray us callously at last. Because a man does not find the law pure
justice, that is no reason why he should fake his gold to a thieves'
kitchen; because he does not think the city a sanitary place, why he
should pitch his tent on a dust-heap amidst pariah dogs. Because we
criticize the old limitations that does not bind us to the creed of
unfettered liberty. I very much doubt if, when at last the days for the
sane complete discussion of our sexual problems come, it will give us
anything at all in the way of "Liberty," as most people understand that
word. In the place of the rusty old manacles, the chain and shot, the
iron yoke, cruel, ill-fitting, violent implements from which it was yet