CORRUPTIO OPTIMI PESSIMA 155 



physician, is metabolism which has got out 

 of time, out of place, and out of proportion, 

 so sexual vice is the fallen state of virtue, 

 and is not to be regarded as some mysterious 

 and catastrophic intrusion. 



Another important consideration is hidden 

 in the conventional euphemism which calls 

 sexual vice " the social problem." Such 

 indeed it is ; for just as certain diseases, like 

 lead-poisoning, are occupational or environ- 

 mental, so sexual vice, like " drinking," is 

 in some of its expressions bound up with 

 injurious occupational and environmental con- 

 ditions and with apparently unrelated social 

 deteriorations. Sweated labour fills the ranks 

 of prostitution ; and its crowded living-rooms 

 blunt the sense of decency and stimulate 

 precocious sexuality. In all cases, of course, 

 the attempt must be made to distinguish 

 between the casual and the chronic sinner, and 

 between a viciousness that is inborn and a 

 riciousness that has been acquired. 



The social aspect of rebellion against the 

 conventional regime of repression must always 

 be kept in mind. Sexual gratification outside 

 matrimony cannot be abstracted off as if it 

 were a purely personal and physiological 

 episode. According to the form it takes, it 

 has a train of consequences personal, domes- 

 tic and social. There is the risk of venereal 

 disease which may, and too often does, pass 

 to wife and children, or break out anew in 

 later life as general paralysis, again often 

 with family ruin; there is also the risk of 

 induced sterility; and beside these still com- 

 paratively personal results, there is the 



