might call it, of a large number of women is, then, implicit in the social system currently accepted. It is not a punishment meted out to those who fail to act in accordance with the social scheme (though it is as such, of course, that society defends it) but is itself an absolutely essential element in the social scheme, an element woven in and out through the entire fabric of current sex morality. It is curious how many people feel that a choice between the present system and any other is reducible to a choice between different degrees of promiscuity. Promiscuity would be an evil, but it does not in itself involve this particular immorality. The worst evils in the present situation are due not to the “lower” half of the double standard but to the doubleness itself. It is true that the ideal of womanly virtue is only one element in the conventional system of sex morality. But, like a Leibnitzian monad, it reflects the whole universe within itself--the universe of sex mores. It is in no real sense any “higher” than the ideal by which men have lived. They are warp and woof of the same fabric. According to this ideal it is woman’s prime duty to keep aloof from evil. This sounds commendable enough. And it would be at least innocuous if one could interpret it as meaning that woman should hold herself aloof from some imagined evil that would become existent were she to embrace it. This is not, however, a possible interpretation of the varied collection of prohibitions which it is her duty to respect. Their import is clearly enough that she is to keep aloof from evil which is already existent, which is an acknowledged part of her background. She is to shun all of those vulgarities, coarsenesses, and immoralities which are to enter into the lives of men and for which, one is forced to conclude, the “other” women are to provide. And from this other class of women she is, of course, to keep herself absolutely separate, distinct. I recently heard an elderly Boston lady make a remark which expresses the horror commonly aroused by any conduct which endangers the distinction between the two classes. “Do you know,” she said, “I heard that a young man of our set said he and his friends no longer had to go to girls of another kind for their enjoyment. They can get all they want from girls of their own class.” This was the outrage. The nice girls were allowing the classes to become confused. Much the same attitude is revealed in the frequent remark that the young girl of to-day appears like “any chorus girl” or like any “common woman.” The horrid picture is usually rounded off with the comment that you simply can’t tell the difference any more between the nice girl and the other kind. One can imagine that this might cause considerable inconvenience. Each of the two classes of women has served a special purpose and it is, to say the least, disconcerting for a person not to know which way to turn when he knows very well which purpose he wants fulfilled.