There is, no doubt, this much in the argument for undergoing temptation, that if the general conditions are such that one is almost sure to be exposed to it sooner or later, it is well to be armed against it by previous knowledge and discipline. Thus the best preventives of licentiousness are probably a wholesome social intercourse between boys and girls from childhood, and a knowledge of and respect for the higher functions of sex. But even here “sex-teaching” may easily be pernicious. Degeneration does not spring from a special part of human nature, but is based on normal impulses, which take a higher or lower direction according as they are guided. Our native traits are for the most part vague capacities which are morally indeterminate at the outset of life, and out of which, for better or worse, the most various kinds of behavior may grow. We know, for example, that the sexual impulses are back of the family, and of all the good which the family at its best brings with it; many psychologists, moreover, believe that these instincts, contained and transformed, are the prime movers of nearly all our higher life, of love, art, religion, and social aspiration. But if we pervert or waste this energy it engenders the foulest things we know, sensualism, prostitution, loathsome diseases, spiritual corruption, and despair. In the same way the need of excitement, relaxation, and change is ever impelling us to new things, but whether to literature, art, and wholesome sport, or to gambling, drink, and degrading shows, is largely a matter of opportunity and education. The mere need of companionship, the very element in which human nature lives, co-operates with a bad environment to entice us into all kinds of evil courses. The boy is bound to join a gang of some sort, and if the gangs in his neighborhood are vicious and criminal the outlook for him is bad; while a girl who has no better kind of society will be likely to frequent questionable dance-halls and accept automobile rides with strange men. There is, in fact, a certain practical truth in the idea of the “natural depravity” of human nature. That is to say, the higher life of the human mind is co-operative, is reached and sustained only through the higher sort of social organization; and, in the absence of this, human nature, thrown back upon crude impulse, falls into sensualism and disorder. Lust, violence, greed, crude generosity, are natural in a sense that self-control, consideration for others and observance of moral standards are not so; they spring more immediately from primitive emotions, and require no higher thought and discipline. In other words, righteousness, in every form, is the difficult achievement of the social whole when working at its best, and is impaired whenever this is impaired. A good soldier can exist only as part of a good army, and a good Christian can exist only as a member of a Christian community, visible or invisible.