But this temperance does not mean quite the same thing as the rigid self-control that used to be preached. The new morality has a more positive ideal than the rigid mastery which self-control implies. We are to fix our attention more in giving our good impulses full play than in checking the bad. The theory is that if one is occupied with healthy ideas and activities, there will be no room or time for the expression of the unhealthy ones. Anything that implies an inhibition or struggle to repress is a draining away into a negative channel of energy that might make for positive constructive work in the character. The repressed desires and interests are not killed, but merely checked, and they persist, with unabated vigor, in struggling to get the upper hand again. They are little weakened by lying dormant, and lurk warily below, ready to swarm up again on deck, whenever there is the smallest lapse of vigilance. But if they are neglected they gradually cease from troubling, and are killed by oblivion where they could not have been hurt by forcible repression. The mortification of the flesh seems too often simply to strengthen its pride. In the realm of emotion, the dangers of rigid self-control are particularly evident. There are fashions in emotion as well as in dress, and it seems to have become the fashion in certain circles of youth to inhibit any emotional expression of the sincere or the serious. There is a sort of reign of terrorism which prevents personal conversation from being carried on upon any plane except one of flippancy and insincerity. Frankness of expression in regard to personal feelings and likes and dislikes is tabooed. A strange new ethics of tact has grown up which makes candor so sacrilegious a thing that its appearance in a group or between two young people of the opposite sex creates general havoc and consternation. Young people who dare to give natural expression to their feelings about each other or about their ideals and outlook on life find themselves genuinely unpopular. When this peculiar ethics works at its worst, it gives a person a pride in concealing his or her feelings on any of the vital and sincere aspects of life, the interests and admirations and tastes. But this energy, dammed up thus from expression in its natural way, overflows in a hysterical admiration for the trivial, and an unhealthy interest in the mere externals, the “safe” things, of life. Such self-control dwarfs the spirit; it results only in misunderstandings and a tragic ignorance of life. It is one of the realest of the vices of youth, for it is the parent of a host of minor ailments of the soul. It seems to do little good even to repress hatred and malice. If repressed, they keep knocking at the door of consciousness, and poison the virtues that might develop if the soul could only get rid of its load of spleen. If the character is thickly sown with impersonal interests and the positive virtues are carefully cultivated, there will