Note 176 — Chapter VII

In the existing traditions of law and police, it is still possible to find many survivals of this tendency to objectify subjective impressions. Thus Mr. Theodore Schroeder has shown (Free Press Anthology, 1909, pp. 171 et seq.) that the prosecutions which have in various so-called civilised countries pursued many estimable and even noble works of literature, science, and art are based on the primitive notion that 'indecency' resides in the object and not in the person who experiences the feeling, and who ought, therefore, alone to be suppressed, if suppression is called for. This psychological fallacy continues to subsist, though it was unmasked in the clearest manner even by St. Paul (e.g. Romans xiv. 14). It is somewhat analogous to the mediæval conception of the criminality of animals.