THE SOCIAL EVIL. TO THE EDITOR.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 9041, 17 February 1891, Page 4

THE SOCIAL EVIL. TO THE EDITOR.

Bib, —In your able leader this rooming (Monday) you state that " of the roots of the social evil one of the strongest is the circulation of corrupting and immoral literature." I think greater light will be thrown on the whole subject by a careful perusal of the following extracts, which I take from "Scientific Meliorism and the Evolution of Happiness," by Jane Hum© Clapperton, a book unfortunately far too little known in Dnnedin. On page 144, she says :— "As regards the prostitnte, the fundamental and primary causa of her existence is poverty, with its antecedent, a too rapid birth rate." She then goes on to say that she will touch on other secondary causes elsewhere in the book. Again, on pages 164 and 105, in quoting from " History of European Morals," by W. E. H. Leckey, vol. ii, p, 301, she quotes, '"However persistently society may iguore this form of vice (prostitution), it exists, nevertheless, and on the most gigantic scale, and that evil rarely assumes such inveterate and perverting forms as when it is shrouded in obscurity, and veiled by a hypocritical appearance of unconsciousness. The existence in England of unhappy women, sunk in the very depths of vice and misery, and numbering certainly not less than fifty thousand (50,000), shows sufficiently what an appalling amount of moral evil is festering uncontrolled, undiscussed, and unalleviated, under the fait surface of decorous society.' "My fellow compatriot's, lot us not deceive ourselves. The price we are paying for the purity of daughters is the moral degradation ol sons, and the necessity of reform lies in this— that our apparent goodness is not real. It is only as the sounding brass and tinkling cymbol. If we fear to break the ' fair surface of our decorous society,' lest it should cave in, the system is not worth preserving. To bresk it up with conscious mind, and strive to make it pure and sweet throughout, would ba no revolu,ion of blind force, but a reformation—the rational action of a free and civilised race, a race resolved that the surroundings of its social life shall be such as will present no vicious temptations to young men, no constant strain upon their moral instincts, tending to reduce the innocent, impulsive unreflcctiveness of youth to mean and despicable hypocrisy. A fair and decorous surface is no compensation for an inwardly diseased organism, and this great social evil festering in our midßt is like a canker that sapa and undermines our truthfulness and utterly destroys our moral growth, 11 The ohaDges that are necessary are numerous and complex in detail; but they admit of being generalised in very simple form, for one and all of these changes will be movements on the lines of greater reverence for human nature, greater simplicity in social life, equality and unity of the sexes, aud enlightened training of the youth to social sympathy, and to the steady repression of every anti-social feeliog."

Ones more, on page 303, we find: uThe> awful fact that ia London alone thore are upwards of eighty thousand (80,000) prostitutes reveals how far distant we are as yet from the national adoption of such sex relations as would be worthy the name of a pure monogamy; and this other startling fact, that as civilisation advances, this great evil does not diminish but increases, and in this nineteenth century ia fatally corrupting tho merest children, calls for a thorough sifting of this hideous subject, and an exposing of the forces that underlie the pair,ful social condition. Miss Ellice Hopkins' work amongst ladies is strikingly significant. It chows that we are rapidly approaching the conscious epoch of evolution, and that even tbo strong sentiment of delicacy, admirablethough it be, will no longer permit humanity to, close its eyes to truth however ghastly. Until the facts of human life are made pure and sweet a delicate refinement will not and cannot dominate the whole mental atmosphere of social intercourse. Science has taught us in this age areverence for tt uth unknown before. It is training us to the patient investigation of facts. It has led us to reject Puritanism as the best form of human life, and to give sex appetite an honourable position in onr theory of life. (See H. Spencer's ' Data of Ethics,' p. 75.) But it has not reorganised society, nor shown us how tho normal, healthful exercise of a general function is to become harmonious with moral and social well being. It has simply launched the new conception into a society already tottering upon its Puritan foundation, and something like an immoral chaos has resulted."—l am, &0., Scientific Meuobist.

Dunedin, February 16,

" What may be done at nny time is done at no time." Do it at once !

SAPOLIO SAPOLIO SAPOLIO will clean the house in a jiffy. It works like a charm. Try a cako of it. Sold by grocers, druggists, and ironmongers.

—Recruits for the Salvation Army have come to headquarters in London in crowds ever since Mrs Booth's ostentatious funeral.