It is precisely here that development in the sense of purity gives a sure hope of moral regeneration. And very remarkable is it that as in the old days when prophetic poetry took the lead in all religious reforms so now we have art in the van of social reform boldly confronting the great enemies of progress—ignorance, pride, prejudice and malicious insinuation. When Ibsen’s “Ghosts” was first put upon the stage of a London theatre, a dramatic critic delivered himself thus: “It is a dream of revolt—the revolt of the ‘joy of life’ against the gloom of hidebound, conventional morality, the revolt of the natural man and woman, the revolt of the individual against the oppression of social prejudice. The joy of life, the joy of life—it rings like a clarion through the play.” (_Star_ of March 14th, 1891.) The fine women of Ibsen’s creation speak out upon questions of sex with a pure, earnest candour that breathes a new morality, and this moral element is one of the central features in Whitman’s attitude towards sex. For the lover, there is nothing in the loved one impure or unclean; a breath of passion has passed over, and all things are sweet. For most of us this influence spreads no farther, for the man of strong moral instinct it covers all human things in infinitely widening circles; his heart goes out to every creature that shares the loved one’s delicious humanity, henceforth there is nothing human that he cannot touch with reverence and love. _Leaves of Grass_ is penetrated by this moral element. (_The New Spirit_, Havelock Ellis, p. 123.) Walt Whitman himself says: “Difficult as it will be, it has become, in my opinion, imperative to achieve a shifted attitude from superior men and women towards the thought and fact of sexuality as an element in character, personality, the emotions, and a theme in literature.” (_How I made a Book._ An Essay by Walt Whitman.) The principles underlying the new morality may be thus stated: Goodness does not consist in starving or denying any normal animal appetite, therefore chastity in the sense of total abstinence is essentially immoral. Life is not so prodigal of joys that man can wisely forego any source of innocent happiness, hence asceticism has no place in a rational theory and code of morals. The course for rational man to adopt in reference to sexual appetite is duly to satisfy and regulate it; and by removing every loathsome condition that superinduces degradation, to compel it to raise the tide of life in promoting individual comfort and general virtue.