possible clear thinking, to examine and present the new moral teaching, to sift true from false; to declare how much has come from more knowledge and understanding, and how much from unreasoning anger, impatience of control, the search for novelty and pride in revolt. Where, too, mere dirt has stained the page.
IV
WHAT, THEN, WERE THE NEW MORAL PROBLEMS, WHAT WAS THE FRANK OUTLOOK, RAISED AND ADOPTED BEFORE THE WAR?
What are their effects, for good and evil, upon modern literature?
We recognize the physical expression of love as itself no way impure or unclean: but as a part of true passion. We know that sin means a state of mind or emotion, a false conception of moral values; and that virtue is not secured by legal sanction. We recognize, frankly, man's weakness and the complexity of social life; wherefore the dangers and temptations of ill-doing must be faced and understood.
Finally, we believe that knowledge brings strength; and, therefore, these "difficult" questions cannot, and should not, be ignored in conversation or in books: above all, not by those who, whether intentionally or not, do influence thought by their power to create character in fiction.
This awakening to a new view of Truth, however, has produced an atmosphere in modern novels which—whatever the aim or intention of modern novelists, leads to grave evil.
1. The determination to call a spade a spade, complete frankness in words, too often ignores the relative importance of things or deeds thus exposed. It tends, unavoidably, to over-emphasize the physical, no less than our grandparents exaggerated the romantic.
2. A recognition of the unmarried mother and the refusal to boycott a whole class, produce detailed and frank pictures of "gay life," in which the pleasures and even the moral conquests are so brought into prominence as to convey the totally false impression that such conditions are freer, and therefore better, than prosaic domesticity.