Only gradually and painfully, through science mostly, now more and more
handmaiden of real education and real religion, shall we know how to
overcome evil. It is always with good. It is too big a problem for me
to give all my views on here. In our “Revolt of Modern Youth” I took
an entire book to tell more about it as I see it. But I do not believe
Christ was wrong nor that the people of this Republic are wrong, who
since its foundation in the wisdom of our Fathers, have fought for just
such liberties as governmental censorship will deny us.
Now, I think a great deal of good could be done in the fight against
evil if our parents and Sunday-school teachers would question youth
more as to their motives for righteous conduct, and with more time and
patience set them right as to their real meaning. You ask them why they
do right and they will generally tell you that it is “to keep out of
jail,” or “the cop’ll get me,” or “I’d get a licking” or “I’ll go to
hell.”
Thus, from perfectly well-intentioned teaching, what we are putting
mostly in their lives is misunderstanding. That is, we are trying to
get virtue mostly by artificial restraints--the same kind of restraints
that are now being proposed through forcible censorship and regulation.
These fears no longer serve as restraints and we are very much at fault
in doing so little to substitute natural restraints as these artificial
ones are passing.
Fundamentally, it is our overstrain in the demand for these artificial
restraints upon human conduct--restraints that come from without--that
is making most of the crime in this country. And their over-emphasis
to the neglect of natural restraints is due far more to ignorance in
churches and schools than the motion pictures. There is such a thing as
going too far in our insatiate demand for these artificial restraints.
It is a greater crime against youth, fostered mostly by well-meaning
church people who are ignorant about youth. They are causing us to
forget all about the more important restraints, or to indulge in a
lazy indifference regarding them because of our mistaken faith in
restraints so largely artificial.
=As against these, what we need most in the lives of youth are the
natural restraints. They come from within. They enable children and
people, in the face of every evil and temptation, without being
afraid to know about it, to see it or to hear about it, to be so
fortified from within against it that they will stand up to meet it
and conquer it. In other words, to have the strength of character to
do right because it is right--not through the fear of punishment or
the hope of rewards--but through true education and religion.=
These artificial restraints, so long thus over-emphasized in
schools and churches, and beheld on every hand in demands for more
suppressions, regulations, prohibitions, punishments, coercions and
censorships, are failing. And it is our insistent refusal to substitute
more of the natural restraints in homes, schools and churches, that is
the great cause of crime in this country. You do not cure evil by more
censorships and prohibitions, don’ts, verbotens and taboos. You are
just adding fuel to the flame you are setting up in this country. The
restraints of hell-fire and damnation are gone. They do not frighten
any more. Those of policemen, prisons and fears of punishments are
going just as fast. The thing that makes most people good in this
country is not any of these things. The thing that will make the bad
ones good is more of the thing that has made the good ones good--the
natural restraints.