I have a son, about whom naturally I think a great deal; just now he is
a student at one of our state universities, and he wrote me the other
day: "I went to a dance, and believe me, father, if you knew what these
modern dances mean, you would write something about them." I know what
they mean. They have come to us straight from the brothels of the
Argentine, among the vilest haunts of vice in the world. Others have
come from the jungle, where they were natural. The poor creature of the
jungle has his sex-desire and nothing else; he is not troubled with
brains, he does not have a complicated social organism to build up and
protect, consequently he does not need what are called "morals." But we
civilized people need morals, and we are losing them, and our society is
disintegrating, going back to the howling and fighting and cannibalism
of the jungle.
Prof. William James, America's greatest psychologist, tells us that
going through the motions appropriate to an emotion automatically causes
that emotion to be felt. If you watch an actor preparing to rush on the
stage in an emotional scene, you will see him walking about, clenching
his fists, stamping his feet, making ferocious faces, "working himself
up." And now, what do you think is going on in the minds of young men
and women, while with their bodies they are going through procedures
which are nothing and can be nothing but imitations of sexual contact?
The parents, it appears, are ignorant and unsophisticated, and have left
it for the children to find out what these dances mean. In Rhode Island,
one of our oldest states, is Brown College, chosen by New England's
aristocracy for the education of its sons; and these boys go to social
affairs in the best homes in Providence, and they call them
"petting-parties." And here is what they write in their college paper:
"The modern social bud drinks, not too much, often, but enough. She
smokes unguardedly, swears considerably, and tells 'dirty' stories. All
in all, she is a most frivolous, passionate, sensation-seeking little
thing."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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