The likeness between these two classes of human beings, between children and philosophers, which has become the most obvious of observations, is, indeed, never a matter of chance. It is as sequential as it is obvious. Each confronted by an unintelligible universe, which he is compelled to explain, attempts to reduce it to order by the method of his reason. The central effort of the life of either is precisely the same. Each fails. The child becomes a man or woman, acquires experience, prejudices, sympathy, superstitions, memories, and so accomplishes his few purposes. The philosopher commits suicide, or dies of old age, according to the intensity of his convictions. As surely as a man is a child who has grown up, a philosopher is a child who has not grown up. The Pauline admonition that he put away childish things he has not heeded not, at least, in regard to the most childish of all things. All of which is the most obvious of observations. The type of philosopher who forgets his hat and carries about into the world the heart of a child has worn out its welcome in the most popular fiction. It is strange that the equally broad generalization, the philosophy of infancy, has escaped an equally general recognition. Perhaps the explanation is that children have so recently begun to write books.

Certainly no one who has ever encountered the merciless rationalism of the human young has failed to mark it. The matured descendant of that small

It was exactly mid-afternoon in May that he, a grown-up Christian now, was thrown into the arena of his grownup fear, a nursery, to three little lions seated about a sort of Gulliver's Travels table before a window. The mother of these lions stood in the doorway. The poor Christian stood in the middle of the floor being looked at, not at all angrily, only thoroughly. The mother of the lions looked anxiously at the group about the table. Then she turned a tranquil glance for an instant to the Christian. So, exactly, might some Imperial Roman, lolling on velvetcovered marble, have glanced down at the terrible sands. And just as that one might, for a brief instant of bored indecision, have looked at his thumb before deciding 'up' or 'down,' so she glanced at her wrist with its tiny watch.

'I shall be back,' she said evenly, 'about six.'

It was then about five. So it was distinctly, "Thumbs down.'

atmosphere, or die. Only children and philosophers can do otherwise.

Yet this man's ordeal had been a light one. He had been set three tasks. First, he had been asked to sing. He could n't sing; but then, neither could the children. He had been taught the fact by experience. Innocent of experience, their ecstasy during ten repetitions of 'My Country, 't is of Thee' was exquisite. His mortification was unnecessary, unreasonable, and painful.

Failing completely to explain his lack of voice, he was asked to tell a story. Now it happened, that whatever selfrespect he had he had won for himself by the belief that he could tell stories and by the stories he had told. In fact, he was a story-teller by trade. It might be well to explain that the situation as it stood then was caused by the mother of the lions, who was his hostess for that week-end and rather at a loss to dispose of him, suggesting,

'I have to meet Elizabeth on the 5.35. Why don't you go up and tell the children stories. I am sure you would tell such wonderful ones.'

He remembered later that he had thought he would would, that is, would, that is, tell wonderful ones. He even had a remnant of such confidence after the failure of 'My Country, 't is of Thee.'

So he started off gallantly at the command, "Tell us a story,' with 'Well, once upon a time—'

In three sentences he had lost his audience. In ten he had disgusted them. They were, on the whole, polite about it, though not obscurely circuitous. They merely said,

'We're going to play Alps.'

Fortunately they let him be the mountain. He possessed superior qualifications for that rôle.

So he lay for the better part of an hour covered by a white table-cloth, and was an Alp, while disregarding feet trampled on his diminished head. In

tain in a nursery is not a gratifying experience.

When at last he lifted a corner of the table-cloth and peered out at his returned hostess, all vanity had fled from that man. There was an annoying symbolism about his attitude on the carpet. He had been brought low by the pitiless logic that seemed to stamp 'Mene, mene' upon his forehead. He had been tested, soul and body, and found only body. He had been subjected to that dreadful and merciless analysis, — so many of whose celebrated practitioners have justly suffered death at the hands of outraged humanity, that pitiless judgment which, taking no account of the nobler, though abortive impulses of mankind, their capacity for love, their dauntless aspiration, their tender fancy and sympathy, the mysteries of their imagination, will accept only the hard cash of Reason.

'Well, how did you like it?' asked his hostess as they went downstairs.

If he had answered frankly, the violence of his feeling, of his just resentment, would possibly have hurled her the length of the flight of stairs. That is the way her children would have answered her.

He managed to preserve some degree of truth, however, by replying that it was one of the most instructive afternoons of his life.

It was a just answer. Later reflection has confirmed it. After all, his assailants were unconscious of their acts. Like himself thirty years earlier, they were the victims of their method. And that method was the only one they knew. Strip any human soul of its experience, of the sympathy that comes by suffering, of the aspiration that springs only from watching the sufferings of others, of the humility that only failure can teach what is left to it,

satisfaction of fatherhood is also an atrophied, abnormal member of society. As an unreconciled bachelor, I have wrestled hard with the problem and have reached certain conclusions, which, I fear, are regarded by some of my friends as most heretical.

I recognize, of course, that economic conditions are partly responsible for this abnormal situation; but I believe that this difficulty could be surmounted without much trouble if it were not for other much more serious influences. The necessity of earning a living, in order to care for dependents; the struggle to acquire an education in law and medicine, as well as in other professions - all this often compels a lamentable delay, or an indefinite postponement, of marriage. This delay is itself frequently tragic in the strain of inhibitions and the consequent ills it imposes on both sexes, at the time when Nature is calling imperatively for her unquestioned rights.

But I am thinking primarily of those who never marry, who bravely put up a cheerful front, but whose hearts are never free from a sense of irremediable loss. I am thinking of those who cannot stand this strain, and who collapse, either mentally or morally. Economic reasons may in some cases absolutely preclude marriage; but I believe that other causes are of much greater weight.

First of all, I accuse the spirit of Puritanism for having fostered a false attitude toward the sex-instinct. Many a boy and girl brought up in a Puritan environment have come to regard the first attractions of sex as something utterly unholy. They have resisted these inclinations and brooded morbidly over them, until they have felt damned beyond redemption. They have turned to ascetic discipline and severe torments of the soul, until their outlook has become badly distorted, even at times to the extreme of insanity.

These unhappy victims of Puritanism have been prevented from realiz ing that Nature is only asking her own: that she rejoices in the instinctive revelations of sex; that adolescence is as natural as breathing, and must not be too long ignored.

Among simple primitive folk, who have mercifully been spared the dark shadow of Puritanism on their sex-relations, the process of mating and of reproduction is rightly regarded as Nature's richest gift. They do not affront Nature by pleading for a delay, or feel guilty when obeying the imperious demands of mature adolescence. As for that matter, even our Puritan ancestors were in this respect more normal and more moral than is the case to-day, in favoring early marriages and in welcoming the rather abundant harvests of such unions.

Puritanism, in its peculiar definition of moral purity and its gloomy approach to marriage, has created a stuffy atmosphere in which it is excessively difficult for men and women to meet naturally. There is a restraint and a prudery that render courtship difficult or illicit love easy. Desperate measures are necessary under such conditions. Severe admonitions or cruel jests either kill budding affections or provoke to acts not infrequently unfortunate in their consequences.

And this preposterous attitude lasts after marriage, when many a young mother finds herself condemned to a painful reticence and evasion at a time when she should be boldly exultant in her supreme realization of Nature's greatest miracle. Puritanism has seemed to associate with this great joy something abhorrent and shameful! I remember how I once shocked a cousin by remarking that one of our relations was expecting a baby; and how, later on, she admitted her inability to understand why she should have felt shocked.

The answer, of course, was this strange thing called Puritanism, which has cast a dreadful pall on the most joyous and natural instinct of mankind.

Next to Puritanism I accuse the spirit of Romanticism - an odd partner in crime for rendering marriage so difficult to achieve. Poetry and fiction have done their worst to foster fantastic notions concerning love and matrimony. Preachers, moralists, psychologists, and writers of various kinds have all united to represent the sex-instinct as exotic and unreal. The native hue of passion has been sicklied o'er by a very pale cast of thought. Youths and maidens have attended theoretical courses in correspondence schools on the subject of matrimony. They have been encouraged to subject their emotions to a compound microscope, to try to discover by analysis whether these feelings are as described in the books. They have been led to be hypercritical to such an extent that they become morbidly introspective. And all the time two sound hearts may have been calling loudly to each other in vain! In their search for a great romance, for the proper stage-setting for courtship, they become utterly confused and hysterical at times. They play on each other's nerves until something is bound to happen; but what happens is too often a tragedy. Nature is scornful of playacting in matters of the heart, and visits fearful penalties on the actors. Nature cannot but have a grudge against this Romanticism, which blinds people to realities and impels them to pursue an ignis fatuus, in an utterly unreal world of intellectual creation.

I accuse also the Feminist movement for its part in bewildering society regarding the relations of the sexes. Many excellent women, in their devotion and martyrdom to the cause of equal suffrage, have practically taken vows of celibacy, like nuns. At least,

the effect is the same, by reason of the emphasis they place on the entering of women into the various professions, their right to economic independence, and their obligation to demonstrate their absolute freedom. The making of a home, the rearing of children, seem to be regarded by the Feminists as, at best, nothing but an evil necessity, to be borne under protest and to be avoided if possible. This attitude in some amounts virtually to an angry revolt against Nature for having been outrageously unjust in placing a heavier burden on women than on men. The way some of these Feminists talk would lead one to infer that they desired legislation from on high, to impose on men part of the task of bearing children!

Another and more sinister effect of Feminism has been the hideous reaction of the argument against a double standard of morality for men and women. Instead of inducing men to be more moral, the tendency would seem decidedly to make women more lax, and even cynical on the subject. I have known women who, ignoring the sententious and incontrovertible argument of Franklin concerning the double standard, have frankly asserted the right of a woman to have her 'fling' as well as a man. There are various sets where an amused tolerance condones moral delinquencies, or fosters a most dangerous attitude toward marriage. As in the case of certain social or stage celebrities, marriage becomes a joke, or a meaningless formality, well characterized by a shrewd Turkish observer as 'consecutive polygamy.'

It is to be hoped, and in fact is to be expected, that, after this exaggerated movement of protest by the Feminists has spent its force, we shall have a return to a sane and natural attitude toward the marriage relation and all that it implies in obligations and ultimate contentment.