SOCIAL CONVENTIONS

gress — which is always in some sensé a violation of the Order — becomes impossible, the Order must perish under the weight of its very defences.

Etiquette, form, fashion, custom, tradition, public opinion, codes of honour, rank, dassdivisions, routine, virtues, Mrs. Grundy, so-called éducation — thèse are the self-protective devices of the slatus quo as against the individual ; they are ail very well in their way, and up to a point ; in excess, they degenerate into the unhealthy and indécent fads and foibles of Respectability. Assuming an authority over the free spirit, which is not theirs by right ; imposed in self-defence by the brute-force of the herd through the médium of its bond-servants — the poUceman, the law-court, the pulpit, the press; becoming the idols and fetishes of drawing-room and market-place, — ^they grow into beetling and bristling barriers which effectively shut men out f rom air, scope, space, risk, danger, and ail the things which make a healthy, independent, virile life possible.

If we may take but one example of the working of this power, çould anything exceed the stupidity of the conventionalism which characterizes the respectable attitude towards that sacred,divinelynatural thing we call Sex ? The very mention of the Word makes some people go hot and uncomfortable ail over. What evil spirit has made this to happen so? We are ashamed of our bodies. The very word *' flesh " seems to hâve

88 CONVENTIONALITY AND SEX

a taint about it. Sucb a thing must not be mentioned in décent sodety. How impure much of our " dècency " is ! Tliis unnatural secrecy ; this evil policy of hush ; this youth-ignorance and adult pnidery; this répressive treatment meted ont to a human passion which bas within itself the potentiality of divine manhood and womanhood, until what should be a pure flame is smothered into a smoky smoulder, and what should be a sweet translucent river oozes into a noisome swamp— how wrong it is; yet how characteristic of thàt which arrogates to itself the function of the backbone and buiwark of Society. Well may Carpenter write:

It is not un&ir to suppose that this valgar Philistinism is largely responsible for tha sordid oommerdalism of the good people of the last oentury. Finding the lute and the lyre snatched from their hands, they were fain to tum to a greater activity with the muck-rake.^

Thèse words introduce the third cause which tends to separate us from a natural life. If we call it baldly and bluntly Civilization, the reader must check a hasty judgment until the matter has been more fuUy dealt with in a subséquent chapter.* For the moment we toay qualify the challenging word and say — that more materialistic tendency of dvilization which is rooted in the institution of private property, i^ues in the triumph and tyranny of machinery, feeds the spirit of greed and crtielty in the not-too-human

* The Drama of Loue and Dâoth, p. 3 5 , » Vide Chapter Xï.