A sanguine preacher in “The Popular Science Monthly” holds out a hope that duty and desire may be ultimately blended through an adroit application of eugenics. What we need, and have not got, is a race which “instinctively and spontaneously” does right. Therefore it behooves us to superinduce, through grafting and transplanting, “the preservation and perpetuation of a human stock that may be depended upon to lead moral lives without the necessity of much social compulsion.” It sounds interesting; and though Mr. Chesterton loudly asserts that eugenics degrade the race, we are too well accustomed to these divergencies on the part of our preachers to take them deeply to heart. Mr. Chesterton has also used strong language (understatement is not his long suit) in denouncing “the diabolical idiocy that can regard beer or tobacco as in some sort evil or unseemly”; and I am disposed, in a mild way, to agree with him. Yet when some time ago I read a pleasantly worded little sermon on “An Artist’s Morality,” being curious to know how a moral artist differed from a moral chemist, or a moral accountant, the only concrete instance of morality adduced was the abandonment of tobacco. As soon as the artist resolved to amend his blameless life, he made the discovery that its chief element of discord was his pipe. “As a thing of sudden nastiness, I threw it out of the window, drawing in, almost reverently, a deep breath of cool October air.” It is possible that the American public likes being preached to, just as Hannah More’s British public liked being preached to. This would account for the little sermons thrown on the screen between moving pictures, brief admonishments pointing out the obvious moral of the drama, deploring the irregularity of masculine affections, the soulless selfishness of wealth; and asserting with colossal impudence that the impelling purpose of the entertainment is to bring home to the hearts of men an understanding of the misery they cause. As it is the rule of moving-picture plays to change their scenes with disconcerting speed, but to leave all explanatory texts on the screen long enough to be learned by heart, these moral precepts dominate the show. The franker its revelations, the more precepts are needed to offset them. Rows of decent and respectable men, who accompany their decent and respectable wives, are flattered by being accused of sins which they have never aspired to commit.