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BRIEUX
IN
the preface to the English edition of
"
Damaged Goods," George Bernard Shaw
relates a story concerning Lord Melbourne,
in the early days of Queen Victoria. When
the cabinet meeting threatened to break up in con
fusion, Lord Melbourne put his back to the door
and said:
"
Gentlemen, we can tell the house the
truth or we can tell it a lie. I don t give a damn
which it is. All I insist on is that we shall all tell
the same lie, and you shall not leave the room until
you have settled what it is to be."
This seems to characterize the position of our
middle-class morality to-day. Whether a thing
be right or wrong, we are all to express the same
opinion on the subject. All must agree on the
same lie, and the lie upon which all agree, more
than on any other, is the lie of purity, which must
be kept up at all costs.
How slow our moralists move is best proved by
the fact that although the great scientist Neisser
had discovered, as far back as 1879, that sup
posedly insignificant venereal afflictions are due to
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