544 LH^E : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



investigation of the subconscious, were also a naturalist, what a 

 super-nco-Lamarckian would he not be! 



Again, too, if his dream-world had been more of his own poetry, 

 and less of others' folHes and sins, what strange new strains might 

 we not have had! And if his earnestness of life, at once scientific, 

 medical, and Hebraic, had found time to develop and voice his own 

 ethical idealisation of sex to the world, as well as for his relieving 

 the unethical irrcahsm of others, wliat moral and even prophetic 

 influence might he not have exerted! Yet towards this he and his 

 school — happily not all docile followers, but with some divergent 

 originality too — have not only been preparing the warning diagnoses 

 and interpretations of salient evils, but actively labouring towards 

 liberating and even redemptive treatment, and even prevention 

 also. Yet for that re-moralisation of sex and youth which is so long 

 overdue — and surely seldom more needed, if our cities, and country 

 too, are to be redeemed from sins and miseries — we need also a more 

 definite turning to higher ideals, and these not only Olympian, and 

 even Parnassian, but even beyond; as the old religions, the antique 

 chivalries, in their way and day, have each striven to show. That 

 the heritage of social life is deeply burdened with evils, and that the 

 heredity of each and all of us is more or less weakened or tainted 

 too, are our modern scientific ways of confirmation and restatement 

 of old doctrines, as of "tfie Fall", and of that "visitation of the sins 

 of the fathers upon their children", and these with their "original 

 sin" from earliest ancestry — indeed, as we now discern, all latent 

 and potential, and on both the self-maintaining and the species- 

 continuing sides of life. The old ideals and endeavours towards 

 dealing wisely with such evils, by actively guiding their potentialities 

 from evil towards good — which religion has termed "redemption" 

 or "new birth", achieved after due penitence and purgation — are 

 similarly reappearing in modern etho-psychologic terms and methods: 

 as even to the psycho-analyst's renewal of the confessional, with his 

 practical demonstration of its uses, and verification of its sequels. 

 "Prayer" also rcap{)cars, as renewed aspiration, confirming purpose 

 and strengthening endeavour towards the better life. And so on: 

 thus in fact William James' brightly predictive interpretation of the 

 coming in of outward hygiene as presage of inner purification of life 

 is coming true. So even are confirmed and renewed other old and 

 high predications and predictions; witness their tradition — vital 

 in all its four senses, bodily, mental, social, and ethical — that the 

 urges of life, however misapplied by egoism or by sensuality, may 

 be "sublimated" — say, rather, transmuted — to high and higher 

 purposes. Vot here is the very essence of ancient ethical teachings 

 and practices: witness asceticisms and chivalries at their best; as 

 often homely life as well. 



Such ethico-social need, urge, and endeavour go deeper and point 



