[BQ] To be sure this will mean preaching the morality of fear, and it may be objected that “burglary is wrong, irrespective whether the burglar does or does not get caught.” But the teaching of pure ethics is best left to the minister, who is the natural teacher of morality. The latter, with all the authority of religion, cannot prevent sex irregularities. Rev. J. M. Wilson (Journ. of Education, 1881) says: “Emotional religious appeals are far from rooting out sensuality and sometimes even stimulate licentiousness.” This is a confession of the ministry that, as far as chastity is concerned, pure ethics seem to have been a complete failure. Hence, the pedagogue and physician will have to give other, more appealing reasons for the avoidance of a promiscuous life. Besides this, the morality of fear is a pretty good working morality. The Bible (Exodus xx, 5 and 12, and xxii, 23, the observance of a command carries its reward and the transgression of a prohibition its punishment) often preaches the morality of fear, and upon the Biblical morality all the western civilizations are founded. Morality is the arrest of the instincts by the intellect, and the intellect always asks for the ethical “why.” The instincts are the voices of the past generations, reverberating like distant echoes in the cells of the nervous system. To overcome this powerful inheritance, the intellect needs a sound, valid reason, and the best reason will be, if we can show the violator of the usages of society that he is not only injuring himself but that he does harm to others. An immoral act must harm somebody. A man alone in the world can not be immoral. If humanity suddenly perished, leaving only one man on earth, there would be no morality left for him. There is no moral precept which is not a social precept, no other duty except toward one’s neighbor. If human sanitation and the universal intelligent use of venereal prophylaxis could banish venereal diseases from this planet, there would be no medical sex-problem, although there might still remain some sex-problems for the sociologists to solve.