We find exactly this relation throughout the history of civilized mankind. To be sure, some editorial writers behave as if the erotic calamity of the day were something unheard of, and as if it demanded a new remedy. The historical retrospect leaves no doubt that periods of sexual tension and of sexual relaxation, of hysteric erotic excitement and of a certain cool indifference have alternated throughout thousands of years. And whenever an age was unusually immoral and lascivious, it was always also a period in which under the mask of scientific interest or social frankness or æsthetic openmindedness the sexual problems were matters of freest discussion. The periods of austerity and restraint, on the other hand, were always characterized also by an unwillingness to talk about sexual relations and to show them in their animal nakedness. Antiquity knew those ups and downs, mediæval times knew them, and in modern centuries the fluctuations have been still more rapid. As soon as a moral age with its policy of silence is succeeded by an immoral age, it is certainly a very easy historical misconstruction to say that the immorality resulted from the preceding conspiracy of silence and that the immorality would disappear if the opposite scheme of frankest speech were adopted. But the fact that this argument is accepted and that the overwhelming majority hails the new régime with enthusiasm is nothing but an almost essential part of the new period, which has succeeded the time of modesty.