THE "SEVEN DEADLY SINS."

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 105, 9 June 1914, Page 6

THE "SEVEN DEADLY SINS."

NOTHING NEW ABOUT THEM.

More than one protest has been heard of late against what the New York "Nation" calls "this frenzy of plain speech on subjects proper and improper —mostly improper—that characterises public discussion to-day."

, As the "Nalion" dispassionately states the situation, "at one end of the scale is the college professor who believes sincerely in the necessity of teaching a certain amount of sex hygiene to children; at the other end of the scale is the Broadway manager who has capi-, talised the brothel; and between t£e two is a whole army of writers, Speakers, educators, agitators, . more or less intelligent, more or less sincere, who have been working on the single assumption that the evils of the world need only to be sufficiently advertised to be cured.''

DETERMINED TO TELL. Of the voices raised in challenge of this assumption perhaps none, has attracted more attention than that of Miss Agnes Repplier, the distinguished essayist, who discusses the subject in the March 1 ' Atlantic Monthly ": "Since there is. really nothing new about the Seven Deadly Sins," remarks Miss Bepplier, "why this relentless determination to make us intimately acquainted with matters of which a casual knowledge would suffice?" While sh,e holds. no brief for "the conspiracy of silence," which she admits was "a menace in its day," she maintains that ,"the breaking .of silence need not .imply the opening of the flood-gates of speech.". She goes on to say:"It was never meant by those who first cautiously advised a clearer understanding of sexual relations and hygienic rules that everybody should chatter freely respecting these grave issues; that teachers, lecturers; novelists, fctorywriters, militants, .. dramatists, social workers, and magazine editors should copiously impart'all they know, or assume . they.; knowy, ~to the : world. The lack of, t tliie lack of 'soberness and common sense wefe -aiieter •' facfrft'' "iippktent than in the obsession 1 of ; sex which 'has set us. all a-babbling: about, .matters: once excluded of eoiiyersation. ; ?NOWJ,ppGE IS THE, CRY. ."Knowledge is the cry. Crude, undigested knowledge, without limit, and without reserve. Give it to boys, give it to girls, give it to children.. No other force is taken, account of by the v visionaries who—in defiance or'in ignoranee of history—believe that evil understood is evil conquered.'' , Missvßepplier thinks, that the natural interest of the child's mind in problems of sex has been greatly overestimated by many UioderhV educators:-

"We hear too much about the thirst for knowledge from people keen to qiwSich it. Df Edward L. Keyes, presir dent of the' Society of Sanitary and Morjil Prophylaxis, advocates the teaching of sex hygiene to children, because he" thinks it is the kind of information that children are eagerly seeking,; 'What isthis topic,' he asks, 'that all these littl# ones are questioning over, mulling over, fidgeting over, imagining, bver, worryihg over? 'Ask your own. memories.' '< ■: A CHILD'S LITE. "I do not ask my memory in vain for (the answer Dr .Keyes anticipates. A child's life is so full> aM everythinjg 'that "enters it seems of'-supreme importance. I fidgeted over . hair wMehwouhj not curi. *1 worried over my examples which never came out right. I mulled (thbligh unacquainted with the, word) oVer eveKy "piece" of sewing put into my incapable fingers, which could, not be trained :to hold a needle. I imagined I was stolen ~by brigands, and became —by virtue of beauty and intelli-' g&hee— : spotise of a patriotic 1 outlaw is arfrontierless land. I ask6d~ artless tions which brought me into discredit with my teachers, as, for, example, who ' massacred'" St. Bartholomew.

"But vital facts, the great laws of propagation, were matters of but casual concern, crowded out of my life, and, out of my lives (in a convent laoa'r ding-school) by the stirring happenings, of every day. How{ "eoul3 we fidget over obstetrics when we *were learning to skate, and our. very dreams were a medley of ice and bumps? How could we worry over 'natural laws' in the. faee of a tyrannical interdict which: lessened- our chancer of breaking pur/necks by forbidding us to eoast down a. li,ill covered with trees? - The children to' be pitied, the children whose minds become infeeted with unwholesome curi- j osity are those who la<Jk> cheerful recreation .religious teaching, and :the fine ept-.'; reetive of A . .playgrpnnd or; a swimming-pool will do more to .keep; them mew tally an d morally sound than scores of leetures on-sex hygiene." ?' j KNOWLEDGE v. SELF-CONTROL;

: ; i Knowledge, Miss Repplier ' declares, will,, not take the ,plae£ of religion and discipline: — ' 1 "It is assumed that youth will abstain from wrong-doing, if only the physical consequences of wrong-doing are made sufficiently clear. There are those -who believe that a regard for future generations is. a powerful deterrent from immorality, that boys and... girls ean be so interested in the quality of the baby to .be born in 1990 that they will master their wayward impulses for its sake. What does not seem to occur to us is that, this deep sense of obligation to ourselves and to our fellow creatures is the fruit of self-control. A course of lectures will not instil self-con'trol into the human iheart. It is born' of childish virtues acquired in. childhood, youthful virtues acquired in youth, and, a wholeSome preoccupation with the activities, of lif6 which gives young people something ito think about besides the sexual relations which are presFcd so relentlessly upon their attention. THE WORLD IS WIDE.

. "The world is wide, and a great dek?, is happening in it. I do not plead for ignorance, but for the gradual and harmonious broadening of the field of know ledge> and for a niore'careful considera-i tiou of ways and means. There are subjects which may bo taught in class, and subjects whieh commend themselves, to individual-teaching. There are topics which admit of "pleinair" handling, and topics whieh civilised man, as apart from his artless brother of the jungles,) has veiled with retieence. There are' trutlis which may be, and should be, privately imparted, by a father,' a mothe?, fjkmily doctor j or an experienced teacher * bat whieh young people cannot advantageously acquire from the plat-

form, the stage, the nlovmg lery, the novel, or the übiquitous monthly magazine.'' ' The "Nation," which thinks that the ! reader " will agree with Miss, Eepplier's main thesis, which is that, noise and progress are not synonymous; that the Puritanism which is so bitterly flagellated was a Puritanism of utterance which did not stand in the way of a fair appreciation of the facts, of life; and that in general the trumpeted revelations of social evils are the emphatic way a young generation always has of announcing the discovery of things which their fathers have known all along." AN INTENSE PEOPLE. ,

"Because we are a nation of business men, other nations are accustomed to call us a practical, people; what they mean iq that we are an intense people. We work hard and play hard and break down from overplay as from overwork. ""We are npt practical. We are a nation of believers in patent medicines -and panaceas. Tlie latest : thing that comes along is sure to regenerate the world. It.may be eugenics, it may be the Boy Scouts, it may-be the direct .primary, it may be grated peanuts. Grated peanuts arc not merely a food; taken in sufficient" quantities they will make us successful in business, purify our politics, adjust our industrial problems, and solve the servant question."