4 86 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Certain it is that every school of materialism, by banishing the spirit- 

 ual element from love, reduces it to a mere physical function, and 

 makes of chastity a monkish superstition. " La morale," a keen wit- 

 ted Frenchman observed to me the other day, "est consideree par 

 la Revolution comme une clericale." And the abounding obscenity 

 of literature and art in France is viewed with satisfaction by her pres- 

 ent rulers, as the most effective weapon wherewith to combat this 

 dreaded foe of the Third Republic. We in England have not as yet 

 got so far as advanced thinkers across the Channel. But unquestion- 

 ably we are on the road. The establishment of the divorce court has 

 been a heavy blow at the old spiritual conceptions of wedlock hitherto 

 unquestioningly received among us. And who can estimate the de- 

 moralizing effect of the flood of filth vomited throughout the country 

 from that " common sewer of the realm " ? The warnings of the saintly 

 Keble " against profane dealing with holy matrimomy " have received 

 only too ample justification. On every side we may discern the tokens 

 how the old reverence for woman, and for that virtue of chastity which 

 is the very citadel of her moral being, is being sapped among us, as 

 materialism advances. The " Christian idea of purity," the Dean of 

 St. Paul's some time ago told the University of Oxford, "has still a 

 hold upon our society, imperfectly enough." Can we ask a more anx- 

 ious question than whether this hold will continue ? No one can help 

 seeing, I think, many ugly symptoms. The language of revolt is 

 hardly muttered. The ideas of purity, which we have inherited and 

 thought sacred, are boldly made the note and reproach of the Chris- 

 tians. " Ugly symptoms," indeed, abound on every side. How largely 

 has our popular literature lost itself in a so-called "realism," devoid of 

 that ethical sentiment, without which, Goethe has well observed, "the 

 actual is the vulgar, the low, the gross " ! The art of the novelist in 

 particular, how very generally is it degraded to the delineation of 

 what the author of " Sapho " — no mean authority on such a subject — 

 calls "ces amours de chair" ; " those merely animal loves," wherein, 

 he tells us, " there is no esteem, no respect, for the object of the pas- 

 sion, and brutality ever wells up, whether in anger or in caresses." 

 Consider how the art of painting has been debased into a vehicle of 

 mere sensuousness, a provocative of pruriency, a "procuress to the 

 lords of hell." It is a true saying of Pope that a man shows not only 

 his taste, but his virtue, by the pictures which hang upon walls. What 

 a tale as to the virtue of this age do its pictorial exhibitions unfold ! 

 Or, again, think — but briefly — of the apotheosis of prostitution which 

 is one distinctive note of our epoch. And here let me guard myself 

 against misconception. I know well that the poor in virtue, as the 

 poor in worldly wealth, we shall have always with us. I know that, in 

 our present highly complex and artificial civilization, the rude pro- 

 ceedings, whereby the men of simpler ages sought to enforce chastity, 

 would be out of date. I think it probable that in any age they did 





