In any case, from the examples and indications which we have cited and countless others of a similar kind which come within the experience of almost every one, nowadays, there can be little room for doubt that the new principle of conduct is very much in evidence throughout the length and breadth of our land. Consciously or unconsciously, it is affecting the character and determining the point-of-view of vast numbers in the new generation.

If you attempt to reason with them and they are willing and intelligent enough to express themselves frankly, their answer and justification for the way they are going sums up about as follows:

"Why shouldn't I think of myself and do what I like and want, as often as I get the chance?

"As long as I steer clear of the law and avoid breaking my neck, what other consequences are there that I need to keep worrying about?

"Why shouldn't I be a pleasure-seeker and a pleasure-lover? Why shouldn't I follow my inclinations and do what I like, whenever and wherever I get the chance?"

Why not?

If you expect them to act contrary to their inclinations, to deny themselves the pleasures that they want, and to do things they do not feel like doing, there ought to be a good and sufficient reason. It ought to be so clear and convincing that it can be accepted with a whole heart and a settled resolve to abide by it.

The young people of to-day are made of exactly the same stuff as the young people of any other day. They have the same sort of instincts and the same underlying aspiration to get the most and the best out of life. Owing to altered conditions, for reasons which we have outlined, they are being left to go about it very largely in their own way, with less coercion from without, than young people have probably ever known before in the history of civilization.

How far will you get by telling them that the way they are going is immoral and sinful? They can answer by saying "If I choose to be immoral and satisfy myself, why shouldn't I? I'm not afraid of being sinful, or any of those old-fashioned scare-crows."

How far will you get by advising that the rod be taken out again and that they be beaten into submission to forms of authority which they no longer believe in or respect? This might result in teaching them duplicity and cunning and resentment, but probably nothing more beneficial to their spiritual health.

It seems to me more sensible to be patient with them and talk matters over with them and try to answer their question in exactly the same spirit in which it is asked.

The question is "Why shouldn't I go ahead and gratify my inclinations in any way that suits myself."

There are many reasons, some of which ought not to be very difficult for any one to understand. Broadly speaking, they are of three different kinds—First, experience; second, affection; third, faith.

Let us examine them in order, in a simple, leisurely way, and try to make clear the essence of each.

What does the question of experience lead to and imply?

First, there is one's own experience; then there is the experience of other people.

Our own experience teaches us very quickly that we often have impulses which it would be a mistake to obey. If you feel like pulling a strange dog's tail and the dog turns on you and bites your hand and the wound has to be cauterized, and you have to go through a lot of pain and trouble and fear of hydrophobia, one lesson will probably be enough for you.

Suppose you are overheated and feel like sitting in a draft and letting the cool air blow on you, and this is followed by a heavy cold which lays you up for a week or two?

Or suppose you are on top of a tall building and feel a strong impulse to jump out and go sailing through the air? Many people have this impulse, but they have previously had enough experience to know what happens to people who fall from high places.

The number of such examples might be multiplied indefinitely, but enough has been suggested to indicate the principle. It is quite obvious and childishly simple—the lessons taught to each and every one of us by our own experience.

Now let us follow this path a step further. It is quite possible for you to have impulses and inclinations to do things which might cause you irreparable harm. The consequences of these things are not something that you can remember and foresee, because in your own experience they have not occurred before. If you stick to your idea of obeying no one but yourself and of being unafraid to do what you want, the lesson in store for you may come too late.

Certain impulses of yours, if followed, may cause death. Others may cause permanent injury to yourself, or irreparable harm to others.

A little boy seeing an automobile coming along the road sometimes has an impulse to run across the road in front of the automobile, for the fun and excitement of it. If you are a boy and feel like it, why shouldn't you?

You have never tripped and fallen in front of an automobile—you have never misjudged the speed of it and been struck and killed that way.

You have never seen any other boy killed that way. There is nothing in your own experience to deter you.

If the automobile happens to hit you, you will have acquired experience that might be useful to you, but the cost is too great. If you are not dead, you may be crippled for life.

If you are convalescing from typhoid fever, you are likely to have a ravenous appetite. You feel very well and you derive considerable pleasure from the milk-toast and soft-boiled eggs you have been getting, but they do not begin to satisfy you. Every instinct within you calls for a big piece of juicy beef-steak and fried potatoes. There is no reason in your experience why you should not gratify your desire—you may have been told by the doctor that it isn't time for that yet and you must be content with what is ordered for you. But if you believe in doing what you feel like and the doctor is out of the way, why not have your beef-steak? I happen to know of two separate cases where this occurred—friends of mine. The doctor in each case apparently took too much for granted and failed to impress upon their minds forcibly enough the need of obeying his orders rather than their own inclinations. The experience came too late—because it brought death with it.

Or suppose you are in some out-of-the-way place and are hot and tired and very thirsty and the only water available comes from a supply which is not fit to drink? You may have been told this by some one who knows more about it than you do, but if you believe in ignoring other people's opinions and thinking only of yourself—and the water is cool and clear and you feel like drinking it, why shouldn't you? Suppose it turns out that clear, cool water may be polluted with cholera, or yellow fever, or other deadly germs? You may never recover from the effects of it.

These are crude, haphazard illustrations of a principle which is constantly at work in human lives in a great variety of ways. The obvious meaning of it is that your experience, or your own lack of experience, in many questions and emergencies may not be enough for you to go by, or depend upon.

Most young people have had very little experience of many things that are liable to have a vital bearing on their own lives, their own selves, their own hope of happiness.

As a matter of fact it must be evident to any one who will reflect a moment, that no one individual, however long he may have lived, or however full and varied his life may have been, can possibly have had in his own personal experience more than a small fraction of the things that may occur and do keep occurring in the world of humanity.

If he has led a clean, healthy, vigorous life, he cannot have experienced the feelings and problems of a drunkard and dope-fiend slowly submerging in dissipation and vice. If he married young and has known the joy of entire devotion to a loyal and loving helpmate, he cannot have had the experience of a profligate who has been divorced four times and is about to take another chance with a dashing grass-widow. Hundreds and thousands of situations that other human beings are called upon to face, he cannot have gone through on his own account.

But if we are able to find out and bear in mind the experience of other people, we can make use of it, as a warning and a guide, in much the same way as if it had happened to ourselves. If I have seen a boy try to run across the road in front of an automobile and stumble and get killed, it is not necessary for me to get killed in order to appreciate the danger of the experiment. You may never have seen this happen, but if I have and I tell you about it, you can use the information you get from me and still save yourself the necessity of risking your neck.

This principle is not at all difficult to understand. It has always been applied, to greater or less extent, in the lives of all human beings, everywhere. It is no more than common sense to profit by the experiences of others, and try to avoid their mistakes.

It seems strange that such a universal principle should be overlooked by the up-to-date minds of the new generation. Yet the least little glimmer of light from it would in itself seem to be a sufficient answer to their question.

"Why shouldn't I go ahead and gratify all my impulses?"

Because although your own limited experience may be insufficient to warn you and guide you, the experience of other people has shown repeatedly that such and such impulses usually lead to such and such consequences which would be very harmful to you.

In the long run the results of others' experience are a better guide to follow than your selfish impulses. You wish to be intelligent and reasonable, don't you? Well, if you lack experience and understanding, it is neither intelligent nor reasonable to imagine that you are the best judge of the consequences.

Of course, the examples we have cited so far—the strange dog that bites, the boy and the automobile, typhoid fever and polluted water—are very elementary. Also the questions they involve—the harmful consequences of certain impulses—are direct and immediate and entirely material. They serve well enough to answer a question and illustrate a principle and that is all they were intended for. The principle is worth bearing in mind, because its application extends to all sorts of complicated questions of conduct. One reason that the young people of to-day are so confused in their moral ideas is just because they have been allowed to overlook this simple, fundamental principle.

It frequently happens that the most important consequences of the thing you do, or fail to do, are not direct and immediate but fairly remote and obscure. An individual without much experience or knowledge of the world may easily neglect to consider them.

For instance, I have known several cases where young men of good family forged their fathers' names. They were up-to-date young men, of course. But even so, how could they come to do such a thing?

By gratifying their inclinations, in the first place, in accordance with the up-to-date idea. One natural consequence of this is that, in order to gratify a new inclination, or as a result of having gratified the last one, it becomes necessary to have more money. That is one of the annoyances of civilization, which even the most advanced of the new generation haven't yet been able to change. Many of their pet impulses cannot be indulged without money. It is an old-fashioned convention and very irksome, but for the time being, at least, it has to be made the best of.

The young men in question eventually found themselves faced with this problem. They had to have money. How could they get it? Not by asking their mother, or father, for it. That source of supply had been used up to the last drop, with the help of all sorts of pretexts, subterfuges and broken promises. There was no longer any available friend or relative to borrow from. That resource had also been used up. They had no jewelry left to pawn—that had been used up, too.

So finally, for the want of a better way, they arrived at this scheme of signing their fathers' names to checks.

After all, looking at it from their point-of-view, and bearing in mind the freedom of the individual, why shouldn't they?

It would do no great harm to their fathers—no real harm at all. They had plenty of money in the bank.

But it would constitute forgery—a serious offense, against the law. "What of that? So is speeding an automobile against the law. Who's afraid of breaking the law—if you have the nerve?"

Is there no such thing as right and wrong? Don't you know in your heart that this would be wrong—very wrong?

"I've been fed up with that kind of talk all my life. What other people think about such things is their affair. I believe in deciding for myself and doing as I like.

"The main thing I've got to consider is my chance of getting away with it and what is liable to happen if I don't. I am sure I can make a good enough imitation of my father's signature to get the check cashed at one of the stores the family deals with. If it goes to the bank along with other checks and the amount is not large, there is small chance of any attention being paid to it. If it once gets into father's account at the bank, as likely as not it will never be discovered. And even if it should be, at some future date, no father would bring a charge against his own son. So the worst that can happen is another one of those family scenes which I have gone through before.

"The most important thing of all is that I need the money—I've got to have it—and this is the least objectionable way I can think of to get it."

This is presumably the process of reasoning the young men in question went through. In each case the immediate consequence of the act was apparently harmless and quite satisfactory to them. They got the money they wanted, the checks were taken in at the bank, time passed and no one knew the difference.

The indirect and remote consequences of this kind of conduct, however, came eventually. They nearly always do. The forgeries in each case were repeated—why shouldn't they be? And the day finally arrived when they were brought to light. In each of the cases the suffering and heart-break of the mothers and fathers was pitiful and beyond recovery in this world. That was one of the indirect consequences.

One of the young men, whom I had known as a bright, attractive collegian, was sent to prison, eventually, in spite of all his family could do. Another died in an institution for incurables. All forfeited their birthright of home, family, decent associations and ended up in degradation and wreckage.

That was one of the remote consequences.

Let us take a more usual example, much less extreme—the young man who steps on the throttle of his automobile because he feels like going fast.

As far as his own experience is concerned, where is the reason for him to deny his impulse?

If a traffic cop happens to see him, he might get "pinched" and fined. That's about the only thing worth considering. But if he keeps his eyes open and his companions in the back seat watch out behind, there's not much chance of that. And after all, suppose he does happen to "get pinched," what of it? There are plenty of others. His father will have to pay a fine and there will be a little scolding and unpleasantness in the family, at the worst.

As for the danger, who's afraid of that? It only makes it more exciting and more fun.

The result is logical enough, if you start with the premise that each individual is free to follow his inclinations and decide for himself.

Very few young men have sufficient experience of their own, or sufficient reflection and wisdom, to give due weight to the indirect and remote consequences which may come from such conduct.

Let us pause and imagine a few of them.

In the first place, an automobile skimming along the road at the rate of sixty or seventy miles an hour has in it elements of danger which are entitled to some consideration. The danger is not only for those who are in the car, but also for others who may wish to use the same road. An accumulated mass of experience has amply demonstrated this. That is the underlying reason for the speed laws—not that young men may be "pinched" by "traffic cops" and fathers be made to pay fines.

If the young man driving the car were the only one concerned in the danger, it might be different. He could claim the right to risk his own neck when he felt like it, and it might be conceded to him. But such is not the case—such is never the case—other people cannot help being affected by his conduct. His companions in the car, their families, his own family, other people on the road and all their families, may be very much concerned in a possible accident caused by his recklessness.

If he kills a little girl, or a boy on a bicycle, or a lady coming out of a cross-road, or if the damage is merely the injury of a few people and the wrecking of a car, there are sure to be unpleasant consequences for the young man himself.

So much for the question of accident or danger of accident, but there is another question of another sort involved.

Suppose the young man has promised his mother and father that he would not drive fast—never above thirty miles an hour—suppose it was on this distinct understanding that their anxiety was allayed and he was trusted to take the car by himself wherever he liked?

Does it make any difference to him whether he breaks a promise—to his mother and father?

He can say to himself that it is only a natural fussiness on their part, and as they are not in the car, they won't know anything about it.

But sooner or later they do know about it; such things nearly always have a way of coming to light. It is an old saying which has been very generally confirmed that, in the long run, "the truth will out." One of the girls in the car tells somebody how fast they went and that somebody refers to it before others until it gets to the boy's mother and father. What harm to the boy? A little scolding, perhaps, and a repetition of the warning and the promise?

That's only the superficial consequence. There is a deeper and more remote one. The parents' confidence in their boy receives a shock. The boy can't always be trusted to keep his word. Also he is inclined to be reckless and irresponsible.

The parents have always idolized the boy; the father has never ceased looking forward to the day when he could turn over to his son a big share of his responsibilities and see him carry on the name and prestige of the family. It is the most natural and fondest hope that fathers have.

This hope begins to be undermined when the boy does something which shows that he cannot be trusted. If he will break his word and take a reckless chance, merely for the sake of gratifying a trivial inclination, what is to keep him from doing so, on other occasions for the same reason? The same spirit and the same point-of-view are certain to find repeated opportunities for the same sort of irresponsible conduct.

When, in the course of time, the realization of this finally comes home to the mother and father, the consequences, although remote, are apt to be extremely serious for all concerned—including the boy.

His character is irresponsible and untrustworthy. His word, or promise, is of no account—he cannot be counted on to keep it. That has been proved by his conduct—unmistakably.

What the harm is to an individual of developing a character of this kind—or a lack of character—is a big and fairly complicated subject which is apparently not much considered by up-to-date young people, who are satisfied to judge things from the point-of-view of selfishness and personal experience. It may be left for discussion later on.

The harm to mother and father and members of the family is also a matter which they incline to imagine is no concern of theirs. According to the new principle, the main consideration is one's own ego and its right to freedom. This question, too, may be left for later discussion.

But there still remains a harm and a loss of a practical, material kind, which in due course is pretty sure to come to the young man, himself. As it has a direct bearing on his pleasures and inclinations, even the most selfish individual should find it worth considering.

If you do things that are reckless and irresponsible, if you break your word and fail to keep your promise, the people who cease to trust you, those who have most to do with you, will treat you accordingly. Those who have it in their power to contribute largely to your enjoyment, and to your opportunities, will refrain from doing so. Invitations, friendships, relationships of various kinds that might have been at your disposal, will be withheld from you.

To get the most out of life, even from an entirely material and selfish point-of-view, you need a lot of help from other people. First and foremost you need it from your own family, in countless ways.

Suppose your own father, as a result of your irresponsibility, refuses to let you have an automobile to break the speed laws with? Suppose he is forced by experience to realize that you can't be trusted with money, any more than you can be trusted with an automobile? This realization is sure to be a source of great disappointment and sorrow to him, but he has to accept it. He must abandon his hope of turning over his responsibilities to you. If money is placed at your disposal, you may be expected to gamble with it on the stock exchange, or the race-track, or to squander it in gratifications of an unworthy and demoralizing kind. A young man who thinks only of gratifying his inclinations, who is not afraid to be reckless and inconsiderate of others, and who fails to keep his word, is hardly a fit person to be placed in control of money. It frequently happens that a father feels it a duty, when he makes his will, to tie up the family inheritance in such a way that it will be beyond the reach of an untrustworthy son.

So that the remote and indirect consequences of this kind of conduct may be more harmful to a young man than his lack of experience and understanding makes him aware of, at the time being.

How about the young woman of superior intellect and breeding, who had an inclination to smoke opium, on one occasion, and to sniff cocaine, on another?

Suppose she had been better informed on the subject than she apparently was. Suppose she happened to have a friend, who had been connected with one of the state institutions for drug addicts, and this friend had told her about the inmates—how hopeless and pitiful their degradation was—how abject their slavery to the drug sensation for which they continually yearned. No way has been found to cure them, because they have no will to be cured. And the beginnings of the habit are so often accidental and trivial—curiosity, or bravado, or carelessness on the part of a practitioner. A Harvard college student, of good family, for instance, was on a spree in Boston, with some friends—they went to an opium joint and thought it would be fun to try the sensation. This particular boy remained in the den twenty-four hours, under the influence. That was the beginning—and the end. He went there again—he got himself a lay-out—and is now a hopeless wreck in the state institution, twenty-one years old. Another is a society woman who was given a dose of heroin and that one dose proved sufficient for her undoing. The craving for it came and she wanted more and more.

Or suppose some one had told her about a very remarkable case which came to my attention, a number of years ago. Four young physicians were associates on the staff of one of our leading medical institutions. A considerable part of their time was devoted to research work and among other things they started experimenting with the effects of cocaine, which was a comparatively recent discovery. They were brilliant young men of unusual character and promise, but all four succumbed to the cocaine habit. The last of them died in pitiful degradation, within five years of their first experiment.

Experience has shown that just as there are certain poisons which the bodily functions are unable to resist, so there are certain drugs which have the effect of sapping the will and distorting the judgment. The craving which they leave in their wake may very easily become so compelling that human nature cannot resist it.

So that if any society woman has sufficient understanding of the subject, there is plenty of reason why she should dismiss an inclination to try opium-smoking, or cocaine sniffing. The impulse is mere whim, silly curiosity—the consequences may be degrading, terrible.

But if she believes in paying no heed to the conventional ideas of other people, and is lacking in experience and knowledge of her own, she may be very well pleased with herself for her daring. "Fools rush in where angels fear to tread"—that is an old saying which suggests that ignorant people, defying the counsels of experience, were known to exist before now—only in the past they were called "fools," whereas to-day they prefer to be considered "exponents of advanced thought," with a superior point-of-view, inaugurating a new era of "emancipation."

It is not my purpose here to go on multiplying examples. I merely wished to indicate as simply and clearly as possible an underlying, fundamental principle. It is at work in countless ways, in everybody's life, nearly all the time. Personal impulses and inclinations may be very short-sighted, very unlovely, very unworthy. Greed, murder, arson, lust, theft, lying, betrayal—are only a few samples of the variety of impulses which may come and do come frequently to various individuals upon occasion.

Our own limited experience and a little reason may be a sufficient guide in many cases. They teach us to overrule certain inclinations, whose consequences we understand and which we deem contrary to our interests.

In many other cases, the consequences may be just as contrary to our interests, though they lie beyond our own experience and present understanding. For that reason people have been taught throughout the centuries to accept and be guided by the accumulated experience and wisdom of those who have gone before. This accumulated experience has been preserved and made available to each new generation, in many ways—traditions, conventions, customs, familiar quotations, standard books, the schools and the Bible. Most of all, it has been the special care and function of parents to instill it into their children. For the first ten or fifteen years of life, children are constantly being told what to do and what not to do, in all sorts of contingencies. And what they are told is the result of accumulated experience in crystallized practical form.

In the days of obedience, discipline and fear of punishment, children accepted and respected this guidance, as authoritative. They formed the habit of doing not what they felt like, but what was considered right and best for them. Very often the true reasons, the complicated motives and remote consequences, involved in a question of conduct were not comprehended by the young people, and only vaguely sensed by their parents. They were traditional ideas, generally approved by right-minded people and passed along. Their origin, in nearly all cases, was the accumulated experience and wisdom of people who did comprehend.

So it happens that a young woman, or a young man, of the new school, without respect for old-fashioned teachings, and with insufficient experience, or knowledge of their own, can fall into the error of imagining that their selfish interests are best served by gratifying each passing inclination.

Their first shallow mistake, as I have tried to show, is in overlooking the lessons of others' experience.

This whole point-of-view, of course, is absolutely selfish and for the time being, I have been content to meet them on their own ground and answer them in terms of absolute selfishness. Even on the assumption that a human being is a kind of animal, which feels no need of consideration for others' welfare, and is devoid of any higher aspirations than a full measure of selfish enjoyment—even then, purely as a question of intelligence, a matter of policy, there are excellent reasons why various impulses and inclinations should be resisted and denied. The nature of these reasons I have attempted to suggest and make clear by some haphazard examples and as previously noted, the basis of them all is Experience.