It is the business of the very few to be independent: it is the privilege of the strong, and whoever attempts it, even with the best regret but without being obliged to do so, proves that he is probably not only strong, but also daring beyond measure. He enters into a labyrinth, he multiplies a thousand-fold the dangers which life itself already brings with it; not the least of which is that no one can see how and where he loses his way, becomes isolated, and is torn piecemeal by some minotaur of conscience. Supposing such a one comes to grief, it is so far from the comprehension of men that they can neither feel it nor sympathize with it, and he cannot any longer go back! He cannot ever go back again to the sympathies of men.—_Nietzsche._ Editorials and Announcements _Mrs. Havelock Ellis_ Mrs. Ellis’s visit to Chicago has been a series of revelations. At first she was a little disappointing: in her lecture on James Hinton and his sex ethics—particularly in the discussion which followed it—Mrs. Ellis did not loom as large as some of her more “destructive” contemporaries. The thing was beautifully done, of course—a gorgeous bit of interpretative art; for Mrs. Ellis chooses words with a poet’s care and presents ideas with an economy that is invigorating and restful at the same time. But in so far as the lecture reflected her own ideas it had some of the limitations to which the eugenist point of view is always open: the failure to go quite the whole distance. Compared with the directness and honest thoroughness of the few pioneers who are advocating birth control—like Margaret Sanger, whose little pamphlet on the subject will cost her ten years imprisonment if the authorities can get hold of her—the ideas of Mrs. Ellis came with a certain inadequacy. But later she cleared herself of the charge of cultism by her laughing remark to some one who discussed eugenics with her: “Eugenics? A mere spoke in the wheel, and a very dogmatic spoke at that. Heaven knows we don’t want a race of averages.” One of her most delightful afternoons was given over to her Cornish stories. She read one called _The Idealist_, which ought to be studied by all those who draw their rigid distinctions between “normal” and “abnormal”. As Mrs. Ellis said, “This story is an attempt to show that those people we so piously consider the worst of us are sometimes the best of us.” And so this charming woman with her simplicity, her humor, her frankness, her idealism, and her fine boyishness is a personality one must not fail to know. She returns to Chicago on February 4, to lecture on sex and eugenics in Orchestra Hall. That lecture will be given exclusively to women and will include a discussion of sex abnormalities, as well as a paper on the subject written especially for the occasion by her husband, which Mrs. Ellis will read. _A Journal of Ideas_