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The time is not long past when the social question was understood to mean essentially the question of the distribution of profit and wages. The feeling was that everything would be all right in our society, if this great problem of labour and property could be solved rightly. But in recent years the chief meaning of the phrase has shifted. Of all the social questions the predominant, the fundamentally social one, seems nowadays the problem of sex, with all its side issues of social evils and social vice. It is as if society feels instinctively that these problems touch still deeper layers of the social structure. Even the fights about socialism and the whole capitalistic order do not any longer stir the conscience of the community so strongly as the grave concern about the family. All public life is penetrated by sexual discussions, magazines and newspapers are overflooded with considerations of the sexual problem, on the stage one play of sexual reform is pushed off by the next, the pulpit resounds with sermons on sex, sex education enters into the schools, legislatures and courts are drawn into this whirl of sexualized public opinion; the old-fashioned policy of silence has been crushed by a policy of thundering outcry, which is heard in every home and every nursery. This loudness of debate is surely an effect of the horror with which the appalling misery around us is suddenly discovered. All which was hidden by prudery is disclosed in its viciousness, and this outburst of indignation is the result. Yet it would never have swollen to this overwhelming flood if the nation were not convinced that this is the only way to cause a betterment and a new hope. The evil was the result of the silence itself. Free speech and public discussion alone can remove the misery and cleanse the social life. The parents must know, and the teachers must know, and the boys must know, and the girls must know, if the abhorrent ills are ever to be removed.

But there are two elements in the situation which ought to be separated in sober thought. There may be agreement on the one and yet disagreement on the other. It is hardly possible to disagree on the one factor of the situation, the existence of horrid calamities, and of deplorable abuses in the world of sex, evils of which surely the average person knew rather little, and which were systematically hidden from society, and above all, from the youth, by the traditional method of reticence. To recognize these abscesses in the social organism necessarily means for every decent being the sincere and enthusiastic hope of removing them. There cannot be any dissent. It is a holy war, if society fights for clean living, for protection of its children against sexual ruin and treacherous diseases, against white slavery and the poisoning of married life. But while there must be perfect agreement about the moral duty of the social community, there can be the widest disagreement about the right method of carrying on this fight. The popular view of the day is distinctly that as these evils were hidden from sight by the policy of silence, the right method of removing them from the world must be the opposite scheme, the policy of unveiled speech. The overwhelming majority has come to this conclusion as if it were a matter of course. The man on the street, and what is more surprising, the woman in the home, are convinced that, if we disapprove of those evils, we must first of all condemn the silence of our forefathers. They feel as if he who sticks to the belief in silence must necessarily help the enemies of society, and become responsible for the alarming increase of sexual affliction and crime. They refuse to see that on the one side the existing facts and the burning need for their removal, and on the other side the question of the best method and best plan for the fight, are entirely distinct, and that the highest intention for social reform may go together with the deepest conviction that the popular method of the present day is doing incalculable harm, is utterly wrong, and is one of the most dangerous causes of that evil which it hopes to destroy.

The psychologist, I am convinced, must here stand on the unpopular side. To be sure, he is not unaccustomed to such an unfortunate position in the camp of the disfavoured minority. Whenever a great movement sweeps through the civilized world, it generally starts from the recognition of a great social wrong and from the enthusiasm for a thorough change. But these wrongs, whether they have political or social, economic or moral character, are always the products of both physical and psychical causes. The public thinks first of all of the physical ones. There are railroad accidents: therefore improve the physical technique of the signal system; there is drunkenness: therefore remove the whiskey bottle. The psychical element is by no means ignored. Yet it is treated as if mere insight into the cause, mere good will and understanding, are sufficient to take care of the mental factors involved. The social reformers are therefore always discussing the existing miseries, the possibilities of improvements in the world of things, and the necessity of spreading knowledge and enthusiasm. They do not ask the advice of the psychologist, but only his jubilant approval, and they always feel surprised if he has to acknowledge that there seems to him something wrong in the calculation. The psychologist knows that the mental elements cannot be brought under such a simple formula according to which good will and insight are sufficient; he knows that the mental mechanism which is at work there has its own complicated laws, which must be considered with the same care for detail as those technical schemes for improvement. The psychologist is not astonished that though the technical improvements of the railways are increased, yet one serious accident follows another, as long as no one gives attention to the study of the engineer's mind. Nor is he surprised that while the area of prohibition is expanding rapidly, the consumption of beer and whiskey is nevertheless growing still more quickly, as long as the psychology of the drinker is neglected. The trusts and the labour movements, immigration and the race question, the peace movement and a score of other social problems show exactly the same picture—everywhere insight into old evils, everywhere enthusiasm for new goals, everywhere attention to outside factors, and everywhere negligence of those functions of the mind which are independent of the mere will of the individual.

But now since a new great wave of discussion has arisen, and the sexual problem is stirring the nation, the psychologist's faith in the unpopular policy puts him into an especially difficult position. Whenever he brings from his psychological studies arguments which point to the errors in public prejudices, he can present his facts in full array. Nothing hinders him from speaking with earnestness against the follies of hasty and short-sighted methods in every concern of public life, if he has the courage to oppose the fancies of the day. But the fight in favour of the policy of silence is different. If he begins to shout his arguments, he himself breaks that rôle of silence which he recommends. He speaks for a conviction, which demands from him first of all that he shall not speak. The more eagerly he spreads his science, the more he must put himself in the wrong before his own conscience. He is thus thrown into an unavoidable conflict. If he is silent, the cause of his opponents will prosper, and if he objects with full arguments, his adversaries have a perfect right to claim that he himself sets a poor example and that his psychology helps still more to increase that noisy discussion which he denounces as ruinous to the community. But in this contradictory situation the circle must be broken somewhere, and even at the risk of adding to the dangerous tumult which he condemns, the psychologist must break his silence in order to plead for silence. I shall have to go into all the obnoxious detail, for if I yielded to my feeling of disgust, my reticence would not help the cause while all others are shouting. I break silence in order to convince others that if they were silent, too, our common social hopes and wishes would be nearer to actual fulfilment.

But let us acknowledge from the start that we stand before an extremely complicated question, in which no routine formula can do justice to the manifoldness of problems. Most of these discussions are misshaped from the beginning by the effort to deal with the whole social sex problem, while only one or another feature is seriously considered. Now it is white slavery, and now the venereal diseases; now the demands of eugenics, and now the dissipation of boys; now the influence of literature and drama, and now the effect of sexual education in home and school; now the medical situation and the demands of hygiene, and now the moral situation and the demands of religion; now the influence on the feministic movement, and now on art and social life; now the situation in the educated middle classes, and now in the life of the millions. We ought to disentangle the various threads in this confusing social tissue and follow each by itself. We shall see soon enough that not only the various elements of the situation awake very different demands, but that often any single feature may lead to social postulates which interfere with each other. Any regulation prescription falsifies the picture of the true needs of the time.