must be fraught with dangers.  The more vividly the impressions force themselves on the mind, the more easily must they become starting points for imitation and other motor responses.  The sight of crime and of vice may force itself on the consciousness with disastrous results.  The normal resistance breaks down and the moral balance, which would have been kept under the habitual stimuli of the narrow routine life, may be lost under the pressure of the realistic suggestions.  At the same time the subtle sensitiveness of the young mind may suffer from the rude contrasts between the farces and the passionate romances which follow with benumbing speed in the darkened house.  The possibilities of psychical infection and destruction cannot be overlooked.

Those may have been exceptional cases only when grave crimes have been traced directly back to the impulses from unwholesome photoplays, but no psychologist can determine exactly how much the general spirit of righteousness, of honesty, of sexual cleanliness and modesty, may be weakened by the unbridled influence of plays of low moral standard.  All countries seem to have been awakened to this social danger.  The time when unsavory French comedies poisoned youth lies behind us.  A strong reaction has set in and the leading companies among the photoplay producers fight everywhere in the first rank for suppression of the unclean.  Some companies even welcome censorship provided that it is high-minded and liberal and does not confuse artistic freedom with moral licentiousness.  Most, to be sure, seem doubtful whether the new movement toward Federal censorship is in harmony with American ideas on the freedom of public expression.

But while the sources of danger cannot be overlooked, the social reformer ought to focus his interest still more on the tremendous influences for good which may be exerted by the moving pictures.  The fact that millions are daily under the spell of the performances on the screen is established.  The high degree of their suggestibility during those hours in the dark house may be taken for granted.  Hence any wholesome influence emanating from the photoplay must have an incomparable power for the remolding and upbuilding of the national soul.  From this point of view the boundary lines between the photoplay and the merely instructive moving pictures with the news of the day or the magazine articles on the screen become effaced.  The intellectual, the moral, the social, and the esthetic culture of the community may be served by all of them.  Leading educators have joined in endorsing the foundation of a Universal Culture Lyceum.  The plan is to make and circulate moving pictures for the education of the youth of the land, picture studies in science, history, religion, literature, geography, biography, art, architecture, social science, economics and industry.  From this Lyceum “schools, churches and colleges will be furnished with motion pictures giving the latest results and activities in every sphere capable of being pictured.”