And I believe they are already in large measure doing this. My
experience has on the whole made me entirely hopeful, and has deepened
my faith in the fitness of men and women for freedom.
None the less and although I belong to the older generation, I propose
to offer some suggestions for this part of life. I cannot make much use
of the word "flirting." It has nearly as many different meanings as
Bolshevism. By some people it is applied to any high-spirited and happy
intercourse between men and women, in which case it signifies only a
right and good thing. Some people mean by it "playing at being in
love," in which case it is a silly and unworthy occupation which saps
the real love power in men and women. Others again mean by it the whole
bundle of silly and sentimental manners which some men and some women
assume when in the presence of the other sex, and in that sense of the
word flirting means just exactly the foolish thing that common sense
would declare it to be. What I am quite sure of is that success in this
comradeship between the sexes depends upon the discovery of a right way
which lies between the coldness which is the negation of good
fellowship, and the undue familiarity which is both dangerous and
undignified.
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