The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1928-02-20
BY WILL DURANT

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never joke with reporters; they will
quote me without the smile, and
they will be certain to ignore modi-
fications.
But it would be shame. now that
this learned discussion has gone so
far, to say that the commotion
has a purely imaginary source. Per-
haps the best thing to do in the
premises is to set down what really
was said with sIndry improvements
that come as afterthoughts), and
to indicate what basic problems lie
at the root of our rather frivolous
debate.
The original query was intelligent
and fundamental. Can we restore
the old moral code? 1t is a good
question because 1t suggests the pos
sibility that the old code is per-
manently gone, and that our current
immortality" is but a cropping trial
and-error transition to a new code
of honor and decency.
For the old code was developed
with an agricultural society in view;
it assumed brief adolescence, and
a rapid arrival of the male at eco
nomic self-sufficiency; it assumed
that marriage would come early, and
that children would come early and
often.
On the farm 1t was cheaper to
marry; the wife was an asset, not
an ornament; the children soon
earned their keep. and became
profitable investments of ones en-
ergy; therefore marriage came
young, motherhood was sacred, and
birth-control was immoral.
And in the complex industrial life
of the city, men attain self-suff-
cheney late, and in the middle class
latest of all; a wife is so expensive
a luxury that only the poor can af-
ford to marry; children are frowned
upon by landlords, and can not
earn money for us till they are IA
or 16.
immigration and the suction of
the city upon the country replenish
the population very we'll; the streets
they interfere with our eight-cylin-
der juggernauts; there is no evident
necessity of adding to their multi
tude.
A BOVE all, the advance of medi-
IN cine, sanitation and parental
care has reduced the death rate to
fraction of what it was; the birth
rate had to come down, or else Ec-
clesiastes and Nautilus would have
been right in believing that when
goods are increased, they are in
creased that consume them, and the
last condition is as bad as the first.
So the commandment to breed and
multiply loses its urgency in the city;
marriage comes late, and children
are an oversight of love.
Social necessity, which makes all
sound morality. no longer requires
large families; early marriage is not
indispensable for the maintenance
of the race, and birth control Is
taken up by the incest ladies in the
land. All things change.
Consequently there is no necessary
permanence, nor any inherent holi-
ness, in the moral code which came
down to us with our religion and our
politics. immortality" is mostly
other peoples morals, or the morals
other days.
! AS the Industrial Revolution al
tered our lives, destroyed our homes,
packed us into apartment boxes, re-
placed the family with the individ-
ual and the State, subjected relig-
ion to science, and art to industry,
SO it is rapidly dissolving the moral
code developed in and for an agri-
cultural age.
Invention, the mother of progress,
is transiently the nurse and inStru-
ment of our immortality"
Adolescence lengthens, and ma
turity of mind and character, like
maturity of means, comes nearer 30
than 20. A man of 80 is young
now, in body and soul; woman, who
in the past was old, decrepit and
trustworthy at forty, now retains her
beauty into the dangerous age:"
and if Balzac we're alive he would
write with admiration Of the wom-
an of 40.
Perhaps in the end, sexual devel-
opment also will be delayed; and
then a new adjustment of nature
and industry may come, with later
puberty, longer period of growth
and education, later marriage, later
climacteric and a heightened life.
When that new adjustment comes,
man will be on higher level of
health, power and thought than
ever before. The prolongation of
adolescence lifted man from brutal
ity to civilization; which of us can
tell the fruits of that further pro-
longation Of adolescence which goes
on today under our very eyes? Is
Bulwer's Coming Race" about to
arrive?
MEANWHILE, however, the inter-
1V1 lude is chaos. Many of our
! people are of South European origin,
and will carry with them, for sew
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| DIR OWN PIES and naStrieS.