With the popular attitude we have already largely dealt. It is still in a transitory, confused state, merging at one end into the old Puritan extreme, and at the other to mere negativism, mere opposition to Puritan asceticism, and without even an attempt to reconstruct a moral standard. This perhaps is an inevitable stage in any transition; but it is none the less unsatisfactory. Man cannot succeed without a standard; and moreover we know intuitively that all things are not morally permissible. If there is purity and beauty and divinity in life, there must be impurity and sin. Will it be considered an exaggeration if I say that it is almost better to have a Puritan standard than none at all? The Roundhead at least was more than a match for the Cavalier because he had a positive inspiration. But there is one common feature in this chaos of evolving popular opinion. The vulgar mind tends to measure morality by what is usual. The sins which most men commit are regarded as hardly evil; the acts which may not be evil, are regarded as sins if they are peculiar. Thus an occasional lapse from continency on the part of a young man is popularly regarded as not very reprehensible, whereas the perpetrator of some weird act of bestiality would be hounded to prison. The flaw in this estimate is not only that the normal standard varies in race and age, but that there is no single human sex nature; there are infinite varieties. To condemn variety _per se_ is, as we shall presently observe, a contradiction of the laws of nature. The gradual emancipation of society from the taboo on sex in conversation is an undoubted gain. We owe such men as Bernard Shaw a debt of gratitude for the way in which they have forced sex reference into the play, and therefore on public notice. But if this is to result in eliminating sex modesty it is creating evils greater than those which it seeks to remove. I will not here embark upon a consideration of such a theory as that which has been interestingly propounded by Mr. Westermarck, namely that there is a relationship between sexual modesty and the feeling against incest.[1] I will only insist that modesty is natural in all qualities which we regard as sacred.