And it is always difficult to decide between the claims of an immediate good and the warnings of dangers that may lurk therein. But we universally acknowledge the duty of some censorship, by prohibiting the most openly tempting pictures, plays, and literature. And there can be no doubt that this supervision should be carried further than it now is.

1

The most pressing contemporary problem is that concerning the stage. Any number of boys and girls owe their undoing to the influences of the theater. No other form of art now tolerated so frequently overstimulates the sex instinct. The scant costumes permitted, with their conscious endeavor to reveal the feminine form as alluringly as possible, the voluptuous dances and ballets, the jokes, stories, and suggestive gestures, and often the low moral tone of the play, making light of sacred matters and encouraging lax ideas on sex relations, are powerful excitants. Many theaters frankly pander to the desire for such stimulation; and they are crowded. For while human nature remains as it is, the young will flock whither they can find sex excitement.

Scarcely less dangerous are the magazines and books that by their pictures and their stories play up to this eternal instinct. Even painters in oils often use this drawing-card; the Paris salons have always a considerable sprinkling of nudes, in all sorts of voluptuous attitudes, making a frank appeal to desire. French literature abounds in books, some of great literary merit, that exploit this aspect of human nature; but in every tongue there are the Boccaccios and the Byrons.

Plato found this problem in planning his ideal republic,

1 See J. Addams, The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets, chap. IV. P. MacKaye, The Civic Theatre in Relation to the Redemption of Leisure. H. Münsterberg, Psychology and Social Sanity, pp. 27-43. J. H. Coffin, The Socialized Conscience, pp. 130-41. Outlook, vol. 92, p. 110; vol. 101, p. 492; vol. 107, p. 412. Atlantic Monthly, vol. 89, p. 497; vol. 107, p. 350.

and decreed that all voluptuous and tempting art must be banished. We are rightly unwilling to sacrifice beauty and enjoyment to so great an extent; such Puritanism inevitably provokes reaction, besides sadly impoverishing life. The feminine form, at its best, is exquisitely lovely; and a perfect nude is one of the most beautiful things in the world.1 How we shall retain this beauty to enrich our lives while avoiding the overstimulation of an already dangerously dominant instinct, is a problem whose gravity we can but indicate without presuming to offer a satisfactory solution.

What can emphatically be said is that artists must subordinate themselves to the welfare of life as a whole. And this is not so great a loss, for only that art is of the deepest beauty which expresses noble and wholesome feelings. The trouble with the artist is apt to be that he becomes so absorbed in the solution of the practical difficulties attendant upon his art that he cares primarily for triumphs of technique, irrespective of the worth of the feelings which that technique is to express. Indeed, there is actually a sort of scorn of beauty in certain studies and studios; the "literary" or "artistic" point of view is taken to mean a regard only for skill of execution, rather than for that beauty of whose realization the skill should be but the means. There is, indeed, a beauty of words and rhythms, of brushwork, of modeling; but if the poet does not love beautiful thoughts and acts, no verbal power can make his product great; and if the artist paints trivial or vulgar subjects he wastes his genius. Too much poetry that is sensual, flippant, drearily pessimistic, morbid, or obscure, is included in anthologies because cleverly wrought, with a sense for form and cadence. Too many stories, too many pictures, are applauded by critics, though in subject and tone they are contemptible. 1 On the moral problem of the nude in art, see Atlantic Monthly, vol. 88, pp. 286, 858.

As proofs of human skill these works may excite such admiration as we give to a juggler's feats; as practice in handling a stubborn medium they may be valuable. But the artist who does not have a sane and high sense of what is really noble and beautiful in life prostitutes the talents by which he ought to serve the world. Often one feels as Emerson felt when he wrote of another, "I say to him, if I could write as well as you, I would write a good deal better."

The bald truth is that artists are seldom competent to be final judges of art; they are too much behind the scenes, concerned too constantly with problems of method. The final judgment as to beauty can come only from one who combines a delicate appreciation of technique with a wide insight into life and a sane perspective of its values. For lack of such a criticism of art, the average man wanders distracted through our art-museums, with their hodge-podge of beautiful and ugly pictures, wades through the ingeniously clever stories and sensationally original but often meaningless or trivial verses in the magazines, goes to a concert and joins others in applauding some brilliant display of vocal gymnastics, some instrumental pyrotechnics, while his heart is thirsting for high and noble feelings, for something to elevate and inspire his life.

The great poets, the great painters, the great dramatists and novelists, have been high-souled men as well as artists, lovers of the really beautiful in life as well as masters of their medium. Their art has no conflict with morality; it is rather its greatest stimulus and stay. To the lesser brood with the gift of melody, of rhythm, with an eye for color or form, but without a true perspective of human values, we must repeat sadly, or even sternly, the poet's reproof:

"Cam'st thou from heaven, O child

Of light, but this to declare?"

On culture: Matthew Arnold, Culture and Anarchy; “Literature and Science" (in Discourses in America). F. Paulsen, System of Ethics, bk. III, chap. v. H. Spencer, Education. H. Sidgwick, Practical Ethics, chap. VIII. Atlantic Monthly, vol. 90, p. 589; vol. 97, p. 433; vol. 109, p. 111. International Journal of Ethics, vol. p. 1.

23,

On the moral censorship of art: Plato, Republic, bks. II, III, X. Aristotle, Poetics. Ruskin, Lectures on Art. Tolstoy, Wha is Art? G. Santayana, Reason in Art, chaps. IX, XI. R. B. Perry, Moral Economy, chap. v. H. R. Haweis, Music and Morals. Mackenzie, Manual of Ethics, chap. XVI. C. Read, Natural and Social Morals, chap. x. Forum, vol. 50, p. 588. Outlook, vol. 107, p. 412.

CHAPTER XXI

THE MECHANISM OF SELF-CONTROL

To discuss, as we have been doing, the various duties which are the unavoidable pre-conditions of a lasting and widespread welfare for men, would be futile, if we had not the ability to fulfill them. The power of self-control is the sine qua non of a secure morality, and therefore of a secure happiness. But this power seems often bafflingly absent. Hard as it is to know what is right to do, it is harder yet for many of us to make ourselves do what we know is right. Life for the average conscientious man is a perpetual battle between two opposing tendencies, that which his better self endorses, and that which is easiest or most alluring at the moment of action. The latter course too often seduces his will; and for the earnest and aspiring this continual moral failure constitutes one of the most tragic aspects of life.1 There is no greater need for most men than that of some wiser and more effective method whereby those who have ideals beyond their practice may regularly and consistently realize them.

What are our potentialities of greater self-control?

The encouraging side of the matter is that there have been many, of very various codes and creeds, who have attained to a nearly perfect self-control, who easily and

1 Cf. Ovid's Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor. And St. Paul's “To will is present with me, but how to perform that which is good I find not. For the good that I would I do not, but the evil which I would not, that I do." From pagan and Christian pen alike there comes testimony to this universal and disheartening experience.