Page:Ploughshare and Pruning-Hook.djvu/84

64 of youth. To departmentalise it in a particular direction leads to impurity of thought; for we destroy the balance of life and degrade its standards if we do not use our moral weights and measures consistently in all relations alike. And if you allow a particular implication of purity to impose its claim in a society whose impurity in other directions makes it entirely impracticable, then you are reducing your social ethics to mere pretence and mockery; and honest youth will find you out, and will turn away from your religions and your ethical codes with the contempt which they deserve.

Is not that what is actually happening—more apparently to-day, perhaps, than ever before? Has not that departmental code to which I refer broken down and become foolish in the eyes of honest men and women, largely because purity is nowhere established in the surrounding conditions of our social life?

What is the true aim of social life and social organisation in regard to the individual? What claim has it upon his allegiance if it does not offer the means of self-realisation and self-fulfilment equally to all? And suppose, instead of doing this in a large majority of cases, it does the reverse: starves his imagination, reduces his initiative, cripples his development, makes practically impossible (at the time when desire awakes and becomes strong) the fulfilment of his nature instinct for mating; how does the claim stand then? If you can only