A people who have tangled thoughts concerning their customs, amusements, and general rules of life, cannot fail also to have crooked ideas as to what is right and wrong. Some of them, however, will wish to do right after a plain demonstration of what duty demands. The drift of education aims to teach pretty much everything except that which concerns the higher grades of conduct. Only a few live in the light of full knowledge; many are in the umbra of complete darkness; while the majority are in the penumbra, or partial shadowland, where half knowledge leads to false experiments and wrong conclusions. We need not expect superior conduct from a semiwakeful people, and where there is ignorance we shall get the effects of ignorance. Nor can reforms be carried out by stealth and secret modes of operation. Reason and knowledge have the most dangerous enemies, apathy, indolence, ignorance, malice, unfairness, and false prudery. Against these there must be a vigorous crusade. Many prudes are as easily shocked as a seismograph, but it is exactly such who cannot be trusted with spyglasses. The world really is not clean and respectable. A group of men, taken randomly, usually drifts to topics of conversation which are not nice and are unprintable, and false sexual philosophy is freely discussed. It is, then, simply nonsense to maintain that any man will take offense at a plain discussion of subjects which are so much spoken about, especially when nothing is presented which can by any possibility encourage anyone to passion and immoral conduct. Here and there a pawn will move on to the king row and get crowned into a more useful piece. This is what we desire. By diligence and a right intention any man may be a shepherd instead of one of the sheep. But this requires a well grounded support in the rules of physical and moral decorum, and an ability to answer spurious objections.
Those who presume to watch over conduct need to feel the force of "Must" and "Ought" as the great powers which rule human action. They must have consciences which are intelligent and which rule, and should have hearts which are right, through which, as Aristotle says, the beauty of the inner life shines through." Such men as these, exercising "moral tact", will not be content to "let the world slide" if they can help it, and they will hold forth the highest ideals toward which the rational-self is to strive with the fullest powers of manhood.
By concerted action we can better resist antisocial customs and little by little mould public opinion closer and nearer to absolute rectitude, and we must not feel disheartened if we see no sudden transformation to the highest ethical stages.
The main body of the book remains as it was in the First Edition, with here and there an addition, and two new chapters.
The imperfect and unsatisfactory table of contents is omitted and replaced by an Index which it is believed will be found more useful. A large part of Chapter IX will undoubtedly be dull reading to many, and parts of it may be read cursorily by those not anxious to follow it in full. But though considerable matter in that chapter may by some be considered immoderately long, yet the force of the whole book's teaching would fall short of its aim if the importance of the facts therein stated were in any way minimized. I entirely agree with the note at the end of that chapter signed "Ed".
Chapter XIII, on Perversions, has been dropped, the matter of which, though perhaps necessary to a comprehensive view of the whole subject of the book, is of little practical use except to experts,criminal lawyers and alienists,who will naturally seek information in elaborate treatises, such as the valuable works of Krafft-Ebing, Schrenck-Notzing, Havelock Ellis, and others.
It is my firm conviction that one is hardly capable of fully profiting by this major branch of ethics until he has been grounded in the fundamental principles which govern human conduct. In this book are accumulated without equivocation those things which are directed to the conduct of men. The feminine half of humanity is left out of our councils, but by no means for the reason that ignorance is a safeguard to them.
For many years I have devoted my available time to the study of morals and the departments of thought which bear thereon, medicine, philosophy, natural-history, sociology, anthropology, and religion. So vast a subject is human conduct that everything seems to bear on it. With an humble opinion of my qualifications, it is nevertheless my rather presumptuous aim to write a system of ethics, not altogether freed from sexual material, but yet judiciously compounded along more comprehensive lines which will not debar it from other classes less robust than my present readers.
No repose can be found in leaving things as they are. Old views when wrong must fade; the social type must be rearranged; and truth must be allowed to emerge from darkness. It is the physician's recompense to alleviate suffering, and the sacredness of his calling puts him under moral obligation to awaken the aspirations of human intelligence for its certain good.
In reading these pages be skeptical and doubt all the
assertions that are made; investigate them; tear them to
pieces if you can. But consider them in fairness; submit
them to all possible tests; and then act with intelligent
regard to conviction. And may this seed not fall wholly
on granite.
JAMES FOSTEB SCOTT. WASHINGTON, D. C.