CHAPTER II.

[11]

Debreyne,Mœchialogie, p. 277. And from the Protestant side see Northcote (Christianity and Sex Problems, Ch. IX), who permits sexual intercourse during pregnancy.

[12]

See Appendix A to the third volume of theseStudies; also Ploss and Bartels,loc. cit.

[13]

Thus one lady writes: "I have only had one child, but I may say that during pregnancy the desire for union was much stronger, for the whole time, than at any other period." Bouchacourt (La Grossesse, pp. 180-183) states that, as a rule, sexual desire is not diminished by pregnancy, and is occasionally increased.

[14]

This "inconvenience" remains to-day a stumbling-block with many excellent authorities. "Except when there is a tendency to miscarriage," says Kossmann (Senator and Kaminer,Health and Disease in Relation to Marriage, vol. i, p. 257), "we must be very guarded in ordering abstinence from intercourse during pregnancy," and Ballantyne (The Fœtus, p. 475) cautiously remarks that the question is difficult to decide. Forel also (Die Sexuelle Frage, fourth edition, p. 81), who is not prepared to advocate complete sexual abstinence during a normal pregnancy, admits that it is a rather difficult question.

[15]

This point is discussed, for instance, by Séropian in a Paris Thesis (Fréquence comparée des Causes de l'Accouchement Prémature, 1907); he concludes that coitus during pregnancy is a more frequent cause of premature confinement than is commonly supposed, especially in primiparæ, and markedly so by the ninth month.

[16]

"Infantile Mortality: The Huddersfield Scheme,"British Medical Journal, Dec., 1907; Samson Moore, "Infant Mortality,"ib., August 29, 1908.

[17]

Ellen Key has admirably dealt with proposals of this kind (as put forth by C. P. Stetson) in her Essays "On Love and Marriage." In opposition to such proposals Ellen Key suggests that such women as have been properly trained for maternal duties and are unable entirely to support themselves while exercising them should be subsidized by the State during the child's first three years of life. It may be added that in Leipzig the plan of subsidizing mothers who (under proper medical and other supervision) suckle their infants has already been introduced.

Nurture Necessary as Well as Breed—Precocious Manifestations of the Sexual Impulse—Are They to be Regarded as Normal?—The Sexual Play of Children—The Emotion of Love in Childhood—Are Town Children More Precocious Sexually Than Country Children?—Children's Ideas Concerning the Origin of Babies—Need for Beginning the Sexual Education of Children in Early Years—The Importance of Early Training in Responsibility—Evil of the Old Doctrine of Silence in Matters of Sex—The Evil Magnified When Applied to Girls—The Mother the Natural and Best Teacher—The Morbid Influence of Artificial Mystery in Sex Matters—Books on Sexual Enlightenment of the Young—Nature of the Mother's Task—Sexual Education in the School—The Value of Botany—Zoölogy—Sexual Education After Puberty—The Necessity of Counteracting Quack Literature—Danger of Neglecting to Prepare for the First Onset of Menstruation—The Right Attitude Towards Woman's Sexual Life—The Vital Necessity of the Hygiene of Menstruation During Adolescence—Such Hygiene Compatible with the Educational and Social Equality of the Sexes—The Invalidism of Women Mainly Due to Hygienic Neglect—Good Influence of Physical Training on Women and Bad Influence of Athletics—The Evils of Emotional Suppression—Need of Teaching the Dignity of Sex—Influence of These Factors on a Woman's Fate in Marriage—Lectures and Addresses on Sexual Hygiene—The Doctor's Part in Sexual Education—Pubertal Initiation Into the Ideal World—The Place of the Religious and Ethical Teacher—The Initiation Rites of Savages Into Manhood and Womanhood—The Sexual Influence of Literature—The Sexual Influence of Art.

It may seem to some that in attaching weight to the ancestry, the parentage, the conception, the gestation, even the first infancy, of the child we are wandering away from the sphere of the psychology of sex. That is far from being the case. We are, on the contrary, going to the root of sex. All our growing knowledge tends to show that, equally with his physical nature, the child's psychic nature is based on breed and nurture, on the quality of the stocks he belongs to, and on the care taken at theearly moments when care counts for most, to preserve the fine quality of those stocks.

It must, of course, be remembered that the influences of both breed and nurture are alike influential on the fate of the individual. The influence of nurture is so obvious that few are likely to under-rate it. The influence of breed, however, is less obvious, and we may still meet with persons so ill informed, and perhaps so prejudiced, as to deny it altogether. The growth of our knowledge in this matter, by showing how subtle and penetrative is the influence of heredity, cannot fail to dispel this mischievous notion. No sound civilization is possible except in a community which in the mass is not only well-nurtured but well-bred. And in no part of life so much as in the sexual relationships is the influence of good breeding more decisive. An instructive illustration may be gleaned from the minute and precise history of his early life furnished to me by a highly cultured Russian gentleman. He was brought up in childhood with his own brothers and sisters and a little girl of the same age who had been adopted from infancy, the child of a prostitute who had died soon after the infant's birth. The adopted child was treated as one of the family, and all the children supposed that she was a real sister. Yet from early years she developed instincts unlike those of the children with whom she was nurtured; she lied, she was cruel, she loved to make mischief, and she developed precociously vicious sexual impulses; though carefully educated, she adopted the occupation of her mother, and at the age of twenty-two was exiled to Siberia for robbery and attempt to murder. The child of a chance father and a prostitute mother is not fatally devoted to ruin; but such a child is ill-bred, and that fact, in some cases, may neutralize all the influences of good nurture.

When we reach the period of infancy we have already passed beyond the foundations and potentialities of the sexual life; we are in some cases witnessing its actual beginnings. It is a well-established fact that auto-erotic manifestations may sometimes be observed even in infants of less than twelve months. We are not now called upon to discuss the disputable point as to how far such manifestations at this age can be called normal.[18]A slight degree of menstrual and mammary activity sometimesoccurs at birth.[19]It seems clear that nervous and psychic sexual activity has its first springs at this early period, and as the years go by an increasing number of individuals join the stream until at puberty practically all are carried along in the great current.

While, therefore, it is possibly, even probably, true that the soundest and healthiest individuals show no definite signs of nervous and psychic sexuality in childhood, such manifestations are still sufficiently frequent to make it impossible to say that sexual hygiene may be completely ignored until puberty is approaching.

Precocious physical development occurs as a somewhat rare variation. W. Roger Williams ("Precocious Sexual Development with Abstracts of over One Hundred Cases,"British Gynæcological Journal, May, 1902) has furnished an important contribution to the knowledge of this anomaly which is much commoner in girls than in boys. Roger Williams's cases include only twenty boys to eighty girls, and precocity is not only more frequent but more pronounced in girls, who have been known to conceive at eight, while thirteen is stated to be the earliest age at which boys have proved able to beget children. This, it may be remarked, is also the earliest age at which spermatozoa are found in the seminal fluid of boys; before that age the ejaculations contain no spermatozoa, and, as Fürbringer and Moll have found, they may even be absent at sixteen, or later. In female children precocious sexual development is less commonly associated with general increase of bodily development than in boys. (An individual case of early sexual development in a girl of five has been completely described and figured in theZeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1896, Heft 4, p. 262.)Precocious sexual impulses are generally vague, occasional, and more or less innocent. A case of rare and pronounced character, in which a child, a boy, from the age of two had been sexually attracted to girls and women, and directed all his thoughts and actions to sexual attempts on them, has been described by Herbert Rich, of Detroit (Alienist and Neurologist, Nov., 1905). General evidence from the literature of the subject as to sexual precocity, its frequency and significance, has been brought together by L. M. Terman ("A Study in Precocity,"American Journal Psychology, April, 1905).The erections that are liable to occur in male infants have usually no sexual significance, though, as Moll remarks, they may acquire it by attracting the child's attention; they are merely reflex. It is believed by some, however, and notably by Freud, that certain manifestations of infant activity, especially thumb-sucking, are of sexual causation, and that the sexual impulse constantly manifests itself at a very early age. The belief that the sexual instinct is absent in childhood, Freud regards as a serious error, so easy to correct by observation that he wonders how it can have arisen. "In reality," he remarks, "the new-born infant brings sexuality with it into the world, sexual sensations accompany it through the days of lactation and childhood, and very few children can fail to experience sexual activities and feelings before the period of puberty" (Freud, "Zur Sexuellen Aufklärung der Kinder,"Soziale Medizin und Hygiene, Bd. ii, 1907;cf., for details, the same author'sDrei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie, 1905). Moll, on the other hand, considers that Freud's views on sexuality in infancy are exaggerations which must be decisively rejected, though he admits that it is difficult, if not impossible, to differentiate the feelings in childhood (Moll,Das Sexualleben des Kindes, p. 154). Moll believes also that psycho-sexual manifestations appearing after the age of eight are not pathological; children who are weakly or of bad heredity are not seldom sexually precocious, but, on the other hand, Moll has known children of eight or nine with strongly developed sexual impulses, who yet become finely developed men.Rudimentary sexual activities in childhood, accompanied by sexual feelings, must indeed—when they are not too pronounced or too premature—be regarded as coming within the normal sphere, though when they occur in children of bad heredity they are not without serious risks. But in healthy children, after the age of seven or eight, they tend to produce no evil results, and are strictly of the nature of play. Play, both in animals and men, as Groos has shown with marvelous wealth of illustration, is a beneficent process of education; the young creature is thereby preparing itself for the exercise of those functions which in later life it must carry out more completely and more seriously. In hisSpiele der Menschen, Groos applies this idea to the sexual play of children, and brings forward quotations from literature in evidence. Keller, in his "Romeo und Juliet auf dem Dorfe," has given an admirably truthful picture of these childish love-relationships. Emil Schultze-Malkowsky (Geschlecht und Gesellschaft, Bd. ii, p. 370) reproduces some scenes from the life of a little girl of seven clearly illustrating the exact nature of the sexual manifestation at this age.A kind of rudimentary sexual intercourse between children, as Bloch has remarked (Beiträge, etc., Bd. ii, p. 254), occurs in many parts of the world, and is recognized by their elders as play. This is, forinstance, the case among the Bawenda of the Transvaal (Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1896, Heft 4, p. 364), and among the Papuans of Kaiser-Wilhelms-Land, with the approval of the parents, although much reticence is observed (id., 1889, Heft 1, p. 16). Godard (Egypte et Palestine, 1867, p. 105) noted the sexual play of the boys and girls in Cairo. In New Mexico W. A. Hammond (Sexual Impotence, p. 107) has seen boys and girls attempting a playful sexual conjunction with the encouragement of men and women, and in New York he has seen boys and girls of three and four doing the same in the presence of their parents, with only a laughing rebuke. "Playing at pa and ma" is indeed extremely common among children in genuine innocence, and with a complete absence of viciousness; and is by no means confined to children of low social class. Moll remarks on its frequency (Libido Sexualis, Bd. i, p. 277), and the committee of evangelical pastors, in their investigation of German rural morality (Die Geschlechtliche-sittliche Verhältnisse, Bd. i, p. 102) found that children who are not yet of school age make attempts at coitus. The sexual play of children is by no means confined to father and mother games; frequently there are games of school with the climax in exposure and smackings, and occasionally there are games of being doctors and making examinations. Thus a young English woman says: "Of course, when we were at school [at the age of twelve and earlier] we used to play with one another, several of us girls; we used to go into a field and pretend we were doctors and had to examine one another, and then we used to pull up one another's clothes and feel each other."These games do not necessarily involve the coöperation of the sexual impulse, and still less have they any element of love. But emotions of love, scarcely if at all distinguishable from adult sexual love, frequently appear at equally early ages. They are of the nature of play, in so far as play is a preparation for the activities of later life, though, unlike the games, they are not felt as play. Ramdohr, more than a century ago (Venus Urania, 1798), referred to the frequent love of little boys for women. More usually the love is felt towards individuals of the opposite or the same sex who are not widely different in age, though usually older. The most comprehensive study of the matter has been made by Sanford Bell in America on a basis of as many as 2,300 cases (S. Bell, "A Preliminary Study of the Emotion of Love Between the Sexes,"American Journal Psychology, July, 1902). Bell finds that the presence of the emotion between three and eight years of age is shown by such actions as hugging, kissing, lifting each other, scuffling, sitting close to each other, confessions to each other and to others, talking about each other when apart, seeking each other and excluding the rest, grief at separation, giving gifts, showing special courtesies to each other, making sacrifices for each other, exhibiting jealousy. The girls are, on thewhole, more aggressive than the boys, and less anxious to keep the matter secret. After the age of eight, the girls increase in modesty and the boys become still more secretive. The physical sensations are not usually located in the sexual organs; erection of the penis and hyperæmia of the female sexual parts Bell regards as marking undue precocity. But there is diffused vascular and nervous tumescence and a state of exaltation comparable, though not equal, to that experienced in adolescent and adult age. On the whole, as Bell soundly concludes, "love between children of opposite sex bears much the same relation to that between adults as the flower does to the fruit, and has about as little of physical sexuality in it as an apple-blossom has of the apple that develops from it." Moll also (op. cit.p. 76) considers that kissing and other similar superficial contacts, which he denominates the phenomena of contrectation, constitute most frequently the first and sole manifestation of the sexual impulse in childhood.It is often stated that it is easier for children to preserve their sexual innocence in the country than in the town, and that only in cities is sexuality rampant and conspicuous. This is by no means true, and in some respects it is the reverse of the truth. Certainly, hard work, a natural and simple life, and a lack of alert intelligence often combine to keep the rural lad chaste in thought and act until the period of adolescence is completed. Ammon, for instance, states, though without giving definite evidence, that this is common among the Baden conscripts. Certainly, also, all the multiple sensory excitements of urban life tend to arouse the nervous and cerebral excitability of the young at a comparatively early age in the sexual as in other fields, and promote premature desires and curiosities. But, on the other hand, urban life offers the young no gratification for their desires and curiosities. The publicity of a city, the universal surveillance, the studied decorum of a population conscious that it is continually exposed to the gaze of strangers, combine to spread a veil over the esoteric side of life, which, even when at last it fails to conceal from the young the urban stimuli of that life, effectually conceals, for the most part, the gratifications of those stimuli. In the country, however, these restraints do not exist in any corresponding degree; animals render the elemental facts of sexual life clear to all; there is less need or regard for decorum; speech is plainer; supervision is impossible, and the amplest opportunities for sexual intimacy are at hand. If the city may perhaps be said to favor unchastity of thought in the young, the country may certainly be said to favor unchastity of act.The elaborate investigations of the Committee of Lutheran pastors into sexual morality (Die Geschlechtich-sittliche Verhältnisse im Deutschen Reiche), published a few years ago, demonstrate amply the sexual freedom in rural Germany, and Moll, who is decidedly of opinionthat the country enjoys no relative freedom from sexuality, states (op. cit., pp. 137-139, 239) that even the circulation of obscene books and pictures among school-children seems to be more frequent in small towns and the country than in large cities. In Russia, where it might be thought that urban and rural conditions offered less contrast than in many countries, the same difference has been observed. "I do not know," a Russian correspondent writes, "whether Zola inLa Terrecorrectly describes the life of French villages. But the ways of a Russian village, where I passed part of my childhood, fairly resemble those described by Zola. In the life of the rural population into which I was plunged everything was impregnated with erotism. One was surrounded by animal lubricity in all its immodesty. Contrary to the generally received opinion, I believe that a child may preserve his sexual innocence more easily in a town than in the country. There are, no doubt, many exceptions to this rule. But the functions of the sexual life are generally more concealed in the towns than in the fields. Modesty (whether or not of the merely superficial and exterior kind) is more developed among urban populations. In speaking of sexual things in the towns people veil their thought more; even the lower class in towns employ more restraint, more euphemisms, than peasants. Thus in the towns a child may easily fail to comprehend when risky subjects are talked of in his presence. It may be said that the corruption of towns, though more concealed, is all the deeper. Maybe, but that concealment preserves children from it. The town child sees prostitutes in the street every day without distinguishing them from other people. In the country he would every day hear it stated in the crudest terms that such and such a girl has been found at night in a barn or a ditch making love with such and such a youth, or that the servant girl slips every night into the coachman's bed, the facts of sexual intercourse, pregnancy, and childbirth being spoken of in the plainest terms. In towns the child's attention is solicited by a thousand different objects; in the country, except fieldwork, which fails to interest him, he hears only of the reproduction of animals and the erotic exploits of girls and youths. When we say that the urban environment is more exciting we are thinking of adults, but the things which excite the adult have usually no erotic effect on the child, who cannot, however, long remain asexual when he sees the great peasant girls, as ardent as mares in heat, abandoning themselves to the arms of robust youths. He cannot fail to remark these frank manifestations of sexuality, though the subtle and perverse refinements of the town would escape his notice. I know that in the countries of exaggerated prudery there is much hidden corruption, more, one is sometimes inclined to think, than in less hypocritical countries. But I believe that that is a false impression, and am persuaded that precisely because of all these little concealments which excite the maliciousamusement of foreigners, there are really many more young people in England who remain chaste than in the countries which treat sexual relations more frankly. At all events, if I have known Englishmen who were very debauched and very refined in vice, I have also known young men of the same nation, over twenty, who were as innocent as children, but never a young Frenchman, Italian, or Spaniard of whom this could be said." There is undoubtedly truth in this statement, though it must be remembered that, excellent as chastity is, if it is based on mere ignorance, its possessor is exposed to terrible dangers.

Precocious sexual impulses are generally vague, occasional, and more or less innocent. A case of rare and pronounced character, in which a child, a boy, from the age of two had been sexually attracted to girls and women, and directed all his thoughts and actions to sexual attempts on them, has been described by Herbert Rich, of Detroit (Alienist and Neurologist, Nov., 1905). General evidence from the literature of the subject as to sexual precocity, its frequency and significance, has been brought together by L. M. Terman ("A Study in Precocity,"American Journal Psychology, April, 1905).

The erections that are liable to occur in male infants have usually no sexual significance, though, as Moll remarks, they may acquire it by attracting the child's attention; they are merely reflex. It is believed by some, however, and notably by Freud, that certain manifestations of infant activity, especially thumb-sucking, are of sexual causation, and that the sexual impulse constantly manifests itself at a very early age. The belief that the sexual instinct is absent in childhood, Freud regards as a serious error, so easy to correct by observation that he wonders how it can have arisen. "In reality," he remarks, "the new-born infant brings sexuality with it into the world, sexual sensations accompany it through the days of lactation and childhood, and very few children can fail to experience sexual activities and feelings before the period of puberty" (Freud, "Zur Sexuellen Aufklärung der Kinder,"Soziale Medizin und Hygiene, Bd. ii, 1907;cf., for details, the same author'sDrei Abhandlungen zur Sexualtheorie, 1905). Moll, on the other hand, considers that Freud's views on sexuality in infancy are exaggerations which must be decisively rejected, though he admits that it is difficult, if not impossible, to differentiate the feelings in childhood (Moll,Das Sexualleben des Kindes, p. 154). Moll believes also that psycho-sexual manifestations appearing after the age of eight are not pathological; children who are weakly or of bad heredity are not seldom sexually precocious, but, on the other hand, Moll has known children of eight or nine with strongly developed sexual impulses, who yet become finely developed men.

Rudimentary sexual activities in childhood, accompanied by sexual feelings, must indeed—when they are not too pronounced or too premature—be regarded as coming within the normal sphere, though when they occur in children of bad heredity they are not without serious risks. But in healthy children, after the age of seven or eight, they tend to produce no evil results, and are strictly of the nature of play. Play, both in animals and men, as Groos has shown with marvelous wealth of illustration, is a beneficent process of education; the young creature is thereby preparing itself for the exercise of those functions which in later life it must carry out more completely and more seriously. In hisSpiele der Menschen, Groos applies this idea to the sexual play of children, and brings forward quotations from literature in evidence. Keller, in his "Romeo und Juliet auf dem Dorfe," has given an admirably truthful picture of these childish love-relationships. Emil Schultze-Malkowsky (Geschlecht und Gesellschaft, Bd. ii, p. 370) reproduces some scenes from the life of a little girl of seven clearly illustrating the exact nature of the sexual manifestation at this age.

A kind of rudimentary sexual intercourse between children, as Bloch has remarked (Beiträge, etc., Bd. ii, p. 254), occurs in many parts of the world, and is recognized by their elders as play. This is, forinstance, the case among the Bawenda of the Transvaal (Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1896, Heft 4, p. 364), and among the Papuans of Kaiser-Wilhelms-Land, with the approval of the parents, although much reticence is observed (id., 1889, Heft 1, p. 16). Godard (Egypte et Palestine, 1867, p. 105) noted the sexual play of the boys and girls in Cairo. In New Mexico W. A. Hammond (Sexual Impotence, p. 107) has seen boys and girls attempting a playful sexual conjunction with the encouragement of men and women, and in New York he has seen boys and girls of three and four doing the same in the presence of their parents, with only a laughing rebuke. "Playing at pa and ma" is indeed extremely common among children in genuine innocence, and with a complete absence of viciousness; and is by no means confined to children of low social class. Moll remarks on its frequency (Libido Sexualis, Bd. i, p. 277), and the committee of evangelical pastors, in their investigation of German rural morality (Die Geschlechtliche-sittliche Verhältnisse, Bd. i, p. 102) found that children who are not yet of school age make attempts at coitus. The sexual play of children is by no means confined to father and mother games; frequently there are games of school with the climax in exposure and smackings, and occasionally there are games of being doctors and making examinations. Thus a young English woman says: "Of course, when we were at school [at the age of twelve and earlier] we used to play with one another, several of us girls; we used to go into a field and pretend we were doctors and had to examine one another, and then we used to pull up one another's clothes and feel each other."

These games do not necessarily involve the coöperation of the sexual impulse, and still less have they any element of love. But emotions of love, scarcely if at all distinguishable from adult sexual love, frequently appear at equally early ages. They are of the nature of play, in so far as play is a preparation for the activities of later life, though, unlike the games, they are not felt as play. Ramdohr, more than a century ago (Venus Urania, 1798), referred to the frequent love of little boys for women. More usually the love is felt towards individuals of the opposite or the same sex who are not widely different in age, though usually older. The most comprehensive study of the matter has been made by Sanford Bell in America on a basis of as many as 2,300 cases (S. Bell, "A Preliminary Study of the Emotion of Love Between the Sexes,"American Journal Psychology, July, 1902). Bell finds that the presence of the emotion between three and eight years of age is shown by such actions as hugging, kissing, lifting each other, scuffling, sitting close to each other, confessions to each other and to others, talking about each other when apart, seeking each other and excluding the rest, grief at separation, giving gifts, showing special courtesies to each other, making sacrifices for each other, exhibiting jealousy. The girls are, on thewhole, more aggressive than the boys, and less anxious to keep the matter secret. After the age of eight, the girls increase in modesty and the boys become still more secretive. The physical sensations are not usually located in the sexual organs; erection of the penis and hyperæmia of the female sexual parts Bell regards as marking undue precocity. But there is diffused vascular and nervous tumescence and a state of exaltation comparable, though not equal, to that experienced in adolescent and adult age. On the whole, as Bell soundly concludes, "love between children of opposite sex bears much the same relation to that between adults as the flower does to the fruit, and has about as little of physical sexuality in it as an apple-blossom has of the apple that develops from it." Moll also (op. cit.p. 76) considers that kissing and other similar superficial contacts, which he denominates the phenomena of contrectation, constitute most frequently the first and sole manifestation of the sexual impulse in childhood.

It is often stated that it is easier for children to preserve their sexual innocence in the country than in the town, and that only in cities is sexuality rampant and conspicuous. This is by no means true, and in some respects it is the reverse of the truth. Certainly, hard work, a natural and simple life, and a lack of alert intelligence often combine to keep the rural lad chaste in thought and act until the period of adolescence is completed. Ammon, for instance, states, though without giving definite evidence, that this is common among the Baden conscripts. Certainly, also, all the multiple sensory excitements of urban life tend to arouse the nervous and cerebral excitability of the young at a comparatively early age in the sexual as in other fields, and promote premature desires and curiosities. But, on the other hand, urban life offers the young no gratification for their desires and curiosities. The publicity of a city, the universal surveillance, the studied decorum of a population conscious that it is continually exposed to the gaze of strangers, combine to spread a veil over the esoteric side of life, which, even when at last it fails to conceal from the young the urban stimuli of that life, effectually conceals, for the most part, the gratifications of those stimuli. In the country, however, these restraints do not exist in any corresponding degree; animals render the elemental facts of sexual life clear to all; there is less need or regard for decorum; speech is plainer; supervision is impossible, and the amplest opportunities for sexual intimacy are at hand. If the city may perhaps be said to favor unchastity of thought in the young, the country may certainly be said to favor unchastity of act.

The elaborate investigations of the Committee of Lutheran pastors into sexual morality (Die Geschlechtich-sittliche Verhältnisse im Deutschen Reiche), published a few years ago, demonstrate amply the sexual freedom in rural Germany, and Moll, who is decidedly of opinionthat the country enjoys no relative freedom from sexuality, states (op. cit., pp. 137-139, 239) that even the circulation of obscene books and pictures among school-children seems to be more frequent in small towns and the country than in large cities. In Russia, where it might be thought that urban and rural conditions offered less contrast than in many countries, the same difference has been observed. "I do not know," a Russian correspondent writes, "whether Zola inLa Terrecorrectly describes the life of French villages. But the ways of a Russian village, where I passed part of my childhood, fairly resemble those described by Zola. In the life of the rural population into which I was plunged everything was impregnated with erotism. One was surrounded by animal lubricity in all its immodesty. Contrary to the generally received opinion, I believe that a child may preserve his sexual innocence more easily in a town than in the country. There are, no doubt, many exceptions to this rule. But the functions of the sexual life are generally more concealed in the towns than in the fields. Modesty (whether or not of the merely superficial and exterior kind) is more developed among urban populations. In speaking of sexual things in the towns people veil their thought more; even the lower class in towns employ more restraint, more euphemisms, than peasants. Thus in the towns a child may easily fail to comprehend when risky subjects are talked of in his presence. It may be said that the corruption of towns, though more concealed, is all the deeper. Maybe, but that concealment preserves children from it. The town child sees prostitutes in the street every day without distinguishing them from other people. In the country he would every day hear it stated in the crudest terms that such and such a girl has been found at night in a barn or a ditch making love with such and such a youth, or that the servant girl slips every night into the coachman's bed, the facts of sexual intercourse, pregnancy, and childbirth being spoken of in the plainest terms. In towns the child's attention is solicited by a thousand different objects; in the country, except fieldwork, which fails to interest him, he hears only of the reproduction of animals and the erotic exploits of girls and youths. When we say that the urban environment is more exciting we are thinking of adults, but the things which excite the adult have usually no erotic effect on the child, who cannot, however, long remain asexual when he sees the great peasant girls, as ardent as mares in heat, abandoning themselves to the arms of robust youths. He cannot fail to remark these frank manifestations of sexuality, though the subtle and perverse refinements of the town would escape his notice. I know that in the countries of exaggerated prudery there is much hidden corruption, more, one is sometimes inclined to think, than in less hypocritical countries. But I believe that that is a false impression, and am persuaded that precisely because of all these little concealments which excite the maliciousamusement of foreigners, there are really many more young people in England who remain chaste than in the countries which treat sexual relations more frankly. At all events, if I have known Englishmen who were very debauched and very refined in vice, I have also known young men of the same nation, over twenty, who were as innocent as children, but never a young Frenchman, Italian, or Spaniard of whom this could be said." There is undoubtedly truth in this statement, though it must be remembered that, excellent as chastity is, if it is based on mere ignorance, its possessor is exposed to terrible dangers.

The question of sexual hygiene, more especially in its special aspect of sexual enlightenment, is not, however, dependent on the fact that in some children the psychic and nervous manifestation of sex appears at an earlier age than in others. It rests upon the larger general fact that in all children the activity of intelligence begins to work at a very early age, and that this activity tends to manifest itself in an inquisitive desire to know many elementary facts of life which are really dependent on sex. The primary and most universal of these desires is the desire to know where children come from. No question could be more natural; the question of origins is necessarily a fundamental one in childish philosophies as, in more ultimate shapes, it is in adult philosophies. Most children, either guided by the statements, usually the misstatements, of their elders, or by their own intelligence working amid such indications as are open to them, are in possession of a theory of the origin of babies.

Stanley Hall ("Contents of Children's Minds on Entering School,"Pedagogical Seminary, June, 1891) has collected some of the beliefs of young children as to the origin of babies. "God makes babies in heaven, though the Holy Mother and even Santa Claus make some. He lets them down and drops them, and the women or doctors catch them, or He leaves them on the sidewalk, or brings them down a wooden ladder backwards and pulls it up again, or mamma or the doctor or the nurse go up and fetch them, sometimes in a balloon, or they fly down and lose off their wings in some place or other and forget it, and jump down to Jesus, who gives them around. They were also often said to be found in flour-barrels, and the flour sticks ever so long, you know, or they grew in cabbages, or God puts them in water, perhaps in the sewer, and the doctor gets them out and takes them to sick folks that want them,or the milkman brings them early in the morning; they are dug out of the ground, or bought at the baby store."In England and America the inquisitive child is often told that the baby was found in the garden, under a gooseberry bush or elsewhere; or more commonly it is said, with what is doubtless felt to be a nearer approach to the truth, that the doctor brought it. In Germany the common story told to children is that the stork brings the baby. Various theories, mostly based on folk-lore, have been put forward to explain this story, but none of them seem quite convincing (see,e.g., G. Herman, "Sexual-Mythen,"Geschlecht und Gesellschaft, vol. i, Heft 5, 1906, p. 176, and P. Näcke,Neurologische Centralblatt, No. 17, 1907). Näcke thinks there is some plausibility in Professor Petermann's suggestion that a frog writhing in a stork's bill resembles a tiny human creature.In Iceland, according to Max Bartels ("Isländischer Brauch und Volksglaube," etc.,Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1900, Heft 2 and 3) we find a transition between the natural and the fanciful in the stories told to children of the origin of babies (the stork is here precluded, for it only extends to the southern border of Scandinavian lands). In North Iceland it is said that God made the baby and the mother bore it, and on that account is now ill. In the northwest it is said that God made the baby and gave it to the mother. Elsewhere it is said that God sent the baby and the midwife brought it, the mother only being in bed to be near the baby (which is seldom placed in a cradle). It is also sometimes said that a lamb or a bird brought the baby. Again it is said to have entered during the night through the window. Sometimes, however, the child is told that the baby came out of the mother's breasts, or from below her breasts, and that is why she is not well.Even when children learn that babies come out of the mother's body this knowledge often remains very vague and inaccurate. It very commonly happens, for instance, in all civilized countries that the navel is regarded as the baby's point of exit from the body. This is a natural conclusion, since the navel is seemingly a channel into the body, and a channel for which there is no obvious use, while the pudendal cleft would not suggest itself to girls (and still less to boys) as the gate of birth, since it already appears to be monopolized by the urinary excretion. This belief concerning the navel is sometimes preserved through the whole period of adolescence, especially in girls of the so-called educated class, who are too well-bred to discuss the matter with their married friends, and believe indeed that they are already sufficiently well informed. At this age the belief may not be altogether harmless, in so far as it leads to the real gate of sex being left unguarded. In Elsass where girls commonly believe, and are taught, that babies come through the navel, popular folk-tales are current (Anthropophyteia, vol.iii, p. 89) which represent the mistakes resulting from this belief as leading to the loss of virginity.Freud, who believes that children give little credit to the stork fable and similar stories invented for their mystification, has made an interesting psychological investigation into the real theories which children themselves, as the result of observation and thought, reach concerning the sexual facts of life (S. Freud, "Ueber Infantile Sexualtheorien,"Sexual-Probleme, Dec., 1908). Such theories, he remarks, correspond to the brilliant, but defective hypotheses which primitive peoples arrive at concerning the nature and origin of the world. There are three theories, which, as Freud quite truly concludes, are very commonly formed by children. The first, and the most widely disseminated, is that there is no real anatomical difference between boys and girls; if the boy notices that his little sister has no obvious penis he even concludes that it is because she is too young, and the little girl herself takes the same view. The fact that in early life the clitoris is relatively larger and more penis-like helps to confirm this view which Freud connects with the tendency in later life to erotic dream of women furnished with a penis. This theory, as Freud also remarks, favors the growth of homosexuality when its germs are present. The second theory is the fæcal theory of the origin of babies. The child, who perhaps thinks his mother has a penis, and is in any case ignorant of the vagina, concludes that the baby is brought into the world by an action analogous to the action of the bowels. The third theory, which is perhaps less prevalent than the others, Freud terms the sadistic theory of coitus. The child realizes that his father must have taken some sort of part in his production. The theory that sexual intercourse consists in violence has in it a trace of truth, but seems to be arrived at rather obscurely. The child's own sexual feelings are often aroused for the first time when wrestling or struggling with a companion; he may see his mother, also, resisting more or less playfully a sudden caress from his father, and if a real quarrel takes place, the impression may be fortified. As to what the state of marriage consists in, Freud finds that it is usually regarded as a state which abolishes modesty; the most prevalent theory being that marriage means that people can make water before each other, while another common childish theory is that marriage is when people can show each other their private parts.

In England and America the inquisitive child is often told that the baby was found in the garden, under a gooseberry bush or elsewhere; or more commonly it is said, with what is doubtless felt to be a nearer approach to the truth, that the doctor brought it. In Germany the common story told to children is that the stork brings the baby. Various theories, mostly based on folk-lore, have been put forward to explain this story, but none of them seem quite convincing (see,e.g., G. Herman, "Sexual-Mythen,"Geschlecht und Gesellschaft, vol. i, Heft 5, 1906, p. 176, and P. Näcke,Neurologische Centralblatt, No. 17, 1907). Näcke thinks there is some plausibility in Professor Petermann's suggestion that a frog writhing in a stork's bill resembles a tiny human creature.

In Iceland, according to Max Bartels ("Isländischer Brauch und Volksglaube," etc.,Zeitschrift für Ethnologie, 1900, Heft 2 and 3) we find a transition between the natural and the fanciful in the stories told to children of the origin of babies (the stork is here precluded, for it only extends to the southern border of Scandinavian lands). In North Iceland it is said that God made the baby and the mother bore it, and on that account is now ill. In the northwest it is said that God made the baby and gave it to the mother. Elsewhere it is said that God sent the baby and the midwife brought it, the mother only being in bed to be near the baby (which is seldom placed in a cradle). It is also sometimes said that a lamb or a bird brought the baby. Again it is said to have entered during the night through the window. Sometimes, however, the child is told that the baby came out of the mother's breasts, or from below her breasts, and that is why she is not well.

Even when children learn that babies come out of the mother's body this knowledge often remains very vague and inaccurate. It very commonly happens, for instance, in all civilized countries that the navel is regarded as the baby's point of exit from the body. This is a natural conclusion, since the navel is seemingly a channel into the body, and a channel for which there is no obvious use, while the pudendal cleft would not suggest itself to girls (and still less to boys) as the gate of birth, since it already appears to be monopolized by the urinary excretion. This belief concerning the navel is sometimes preserved through the whole period of adolescence, especially in girls of the so-called educated class, who are too well-bred to discuss the matter with their married friends, and believe indeed that they are already sufficiently well informed. At this age the belief may not be altogether harmless, in so far as it leads to the real gate of sex being left unguarded. In Elsass where girls commonly believe, and are taught, that babies come through the navel, popular folk-tales are current (Anthropophyteia, vol.iii, p. 89) which represent the mistakes resulting from this belief as leading to the loss of virginity.

Freud, who believes that children give little credit to the stork fable and similar stories invented for their mystification, has made an interesting psychological investigation into the real theories which children themselves, as the result of observation and thought, reach concerning the sexual facts of life (S. Freud, "Ueber Infantile Sexualtheorien,"Sexual-Probleme, Dec., 1908). Such theories, he remarks, correspond to the brilliant, but defective hypotheses which primitive peoples arrive at concerning the nature and origin of the world. There are three theories, which, as Freud quite truly concludes, are very commonly formed by children. The first, and the most widely disseminated, is that there is no real anatomical difference between boys and girls; if the boy notices that his little sister has no obvious penis he even concludes that it is because she is too young, and the little girl herself takes the same view. The fact that in early life the clitoris is relatively larger and more penis-like helps to confirm this view which Freud connects with the tendency in later life to erotic dream of women furnished with a penis. This theory, as Freud also remarks, favors the growth of homosexuality when its germs are present. The second theory is the fæcal theory of the origin of babies. The child, who perhaps thinks his mother has a penis, and is in any case ignorant of the vagina, concludes that the baby is brought into the world by an action analogous to the action of the bowels. The third theory, which is perhaps less prevalent than the others, Freud terms the sadistic theory of coitus. The child realizes that his father must have taken some sort of part in his production. The theory that sexual intercourse consists in violence has in it a trace of truth, but seems to be arrived at rather obscurely. The child's own sexual feelings are often aroused for the first time when wrestling or struggling with a companion; he may see his mother, also, resisting more or less playfully a sudden caress from his father, and if a real quarrel takes place, the impression may be fortified. As to what the state of marriage consists in, Freud finds that it is usually regarded as a state which abolishes modesty; the most prevalent theory being that marriage means that people can make water before each other, while another common childish theory is that marriage is when people can show each other their private parts.

Thus it is that at a very early stage of the child's life we are brought face to face with the question how we may most wisely begin his initiation into the knowledge of the great central facts of sex. It is perhaps a little late in the day to regard it as a question, but so it is among us, although three thousand fivehundred years ago, the Egyptian father spoke to his child: "I have given you a mother who has carried you within her, a heavy burden, for your sake, and without resting on me. When at last you were born, she indeed submitted herself to the yoke, for during three years were her nipples in your mouth. Your excrements never turned her stomach, nor made her say, 'What am I doing?' When you were sent to school she went regularly every day to carry the household bread and beer to your master. When in your turn you marry and have a child, bring up your child as your mother brought you up."[20]

I take it for granted, however, that—whatever doubt there may be as to the how or the when—no doubt is any longer possible as to the absolute necessity of taking deliberate and active part in this sexual initiation, instead of leaving it to the chance revelation of ignorant and perhaps vicious companions or servants. It is becoming more and more widely felt that the risks of ignorant innocence are too great.

"All the love and solicitude parental yearning can bestow," writes Dr. G. F. Butler, of Chicago (Love and its Affinities, 1899, p. 83), "all that the most refined religious influence can offer, all that the most cultivated associations can accomplish, in one fatal moment may be obliterated. There is no room for ethical reasoning, indeed oftentimes no consciousness of wrong, but only Margaret's 'Es war so süss'." The same writer adds (as had been previously remarked by Mrs. Craik and others) that among church members it is the finer and more sensitive organizations that are the most susceptible to sexual emotions. So far as boys are concerned, we leave instruction in matters of sex, the most sacred and central fact in the world, as Canon Lyttelton remarks, to "dirty-minded school-boys, grooms, garden-boys, anyone, in short, who at an early age may be sufficiently defiled and sufficiently reckless to talk of them." And, so far as girls are concerned, as Balzac long ago remarked, "a mother may bring up her daughter severely, and cover her beneath her wings for seventeen years; but a servant-girl can destroy that long work by a word, even by a gesture."The great part played by servant-girls of the lower class in the sexual initiation of the children of the middle class has been illustrated in dealing with "The Sexual Impulse in Women" in vol. iii, of theseStudies, and need not now be further discussed. I would only here say a word, in passing, on the other side. Often as servant-girls take this part, we must not go so far as to say that it is the case with the majority. As regards Germany, Dr. Alfred Kind has lately put on record his experience: "I havenever, in youth, heard a bad or improper word on sex-relationships from a servant-girl, although servant-girls followed one another in our house like sunshine and showers in April, and there was always a relation of comradeship between us children and the servants." As regards England, I can add that my own youthful experiences correspond to Dr. Kind's. This is not surprising, for one may say that in the ordinary well-conditioned girl, though her virtue may not be developed to heroic proportions, there is yet usually a natural respect for the innocence of children, a natural sexual indifference to them, and a natural expectation that the male should take the active part when a sexual situation arises.

The great part played by servant-girls of the lower class in the sexual initiation of the children of the middle class has been illustrated in dealing with "The Sexual Impulse in Women" in vol. iii, of theseStudies, and need not now be further discussed. I would only here say a word, in passing, on the other side. Often as servant-girls take this part, we must not go so far as to say that it is the case with the majority. As regards Germany, Dr. Alfred Kind has lately put on record his experience: "I havenever, in youth, heard a bad or improper word on sex-relationships from a servant-girl, although servant-girls followed one another in our house like sunshine and showers in April, and there was always a relation of comradeship between us children and the servants." As regards England, I can add that my own youthful experiences correspond to Dr. Kind's. This is not surprising, for one may say that in the ordinary well-conditioned girl, though her virtue may not be developed to heroic proportions, there is yet usually a natural respect for the innocence of children, a natural sexual indifference to them, and a natural expectation that the male should take the active part when a sexual situation arises.

It is also beginning to be felt that, especially as regards women, ignorant innocence is not merely too fragile a possession to be worth preservation, but that it is positively mischievous, since it involves the lack of necessary knowledge. "It is little short of criminal," writes Dr. F. M. Goodchild,[21]"to send our young people into the midst of the excitements and temptations of a great city with no more preparation than if they were going to live in Paradise." In the case of women, ignorance has the further disadvantage that it deprives them of the knowledge necessary for intelligent sympathy with other women. The unsympathetic attitude of women towards women is often largely due to sheer ignorance of the facts of life. "Why," writes in a private letter a married lady who keenly realizes this, "are women brought up with such a profound ignorance of their own and especially other women's natures? They do not know half as much about other women as a man of the most average capacity learns in his day's march." We try to make up for our failure to educate women in the essential matters of sex by imposing upon the police and other guardians of public order the duty of protecting women and morals. But, as Moll insists, the real problem of chastity lies, not in the multiplication of lawsand policemen, but largely in women's knowledge of the dangers of sex and in the cultivation of their sense of responsibility.[22]We are always making laws for the protection of children and setting the police on guard. But laws and the police, whether their activities are good or bad, are in either case alike ineffectual. They can for the most part only be invoked when the damage is already done. We have to learn to go to the root of the matter. We have to teach children to be a law to themselves. We have to give them that knowledge which will enable them to guard their own personalities.[23]There is an authentic story of a lady who had learned to swim, much to the horror of her clergyman, who thought that swimming was unfeminine. "But," she said, "suppose I was drowning." "In that case," he replied, "you ought to wait until a man comes along and saves you." There we have the two methods of salvation which have been preached to women, the old method and the new. In no sea have women been more often in danger of drowning than that of sex. There ought to be no question as to which is the better method of salvation.

It is difficult nowadays to find any serious arguments against the desirability of early sexual enlightenment, and it is almost with amusement that we read how the novelist Alphonse Daudet, when asked his opinion of such enlightenment, protested—in a spirit certainly common among the men of his time—that it was unnecessary, because boys could learn everything from the streets and the newspapers, while "as to young girls—no! I would teach them none of the truths of physiology. I can only see disadvantages in such a proceeding. These truths are ugly, disillusioning, sure to shock, to frighten, to disgust the mind, the nature, of a girl." It is as much as to say that there is no need to supply sources of pure water when there are puddles in the street that anyone can drink of. A contemporary of Daudet's, who possessed a far finer spiritual insight, Coventry Patmore, the poet, in the essay on "Ancient and Modern Ideas of Purity" in his beautiful book,Religio Poetæ, had already finely protested against that "disease of impurity"which comes of "our modern undivine silences" for which Daudet pleaded. And Metchnikoff, more recently, from the scientific side, speaking especially as regards women, declares that knowledge is so indispensable for moral conduct that "ignorance must be counted the most immoral of acts" (Essais Optimistes, p. 420).The distinguished Belgian novelist, Camille Lemonnier, in hisL'Homme en Amour, deals with the question of the sexual education of the young by presenting the history of a young man, brought up under the influence of the conventional and hypocritical views which teach that nudity and sex are shameful and disgusting things. In this way he passes by the opportunities of innocent and natural love, to become hopelessly enslaved at last to a sensual woman who treats him merely as the instrument of her pleasure, the last of a long succession of lovers. The book is a powerful plea for a sane, wholesome, and natural education in matters of sex. It was, however, prosecuted at Bruges, in 1901, though the trial finally ended in acquittal. Such a verdict is in harmony with the general tendency of feeling at the present time.The old ideas, expressed by Daudet, that the facts of sex are ugly and disillusioning, and that they shock the mind of the young, are both alike entirely false. As Canon Lyttelton remarks, in urging that the laws of the transmission of life should be taught to children by the mother: "The way they receive it with native reverence, truthfulness of understanding and guileless delicacy, is nothing short of a revelation of the never-ceasing beauty of nature. People sometimes speak of the indescribable beauty of children's innocence. But I venture to say that no one quite knows what it is who has foregone the privilege of being the first to set before them the true meaning of life and birth and the mystery of their own being. Not only do we fail to build up sound knowledge in them, but we put away from ourselves the chance of learning something that must be divine." In the same way, Edward Carpenter, stating that it is easy and natural for the child to learn from the first its physical relation to its mother, remarks (Love's Coming of Age, p. 9): "A child at the age of puberty, with the unfolding of its far-down emotional and sexual nature, is eminently capable of the most sensitive, affectional and serene appreciation of whatsexmeans (generally more so as things are to-day, than its worldling parent or guardian); and can absorb the teaching, if sympathetically given, without any shock or disturbance to its sense of shame—that sense which is so natural and valuable a safeguard of early youth."How widespread, even some years ago, had become the conviction that the sexual facts of life should be taught to girls as well as boys, was shown when the opinions of a very miscellaneous assortment of more or less prominent persons were sought on the question ("The Tree of Knowledge,"New Review, June, 1894). A small minority of two only(Rabbi Adler and Mrs. Lynn Lynton) were against such knowledge, while among the majority in favor of it were Mme. Adam, Thomas Hardy, Sir Walter Besant, Björnson, Hall Caine, Sarah Grand, Nordau, Lady Henry Somerset, Baroness von Suttner, and Miss Willard. The leaders of the woman's movement are, of course, in favor of such knowledge. Thus a meeting of the Bund für Mutterschutz at Berlin, in 1905, almost unanimously passed a resolution declaring that the early sexual enlightenment of children in the facts of the sexual life is urgently necessary (Mutterschutz, 1905, Heft 2, p. 91). It may be added that medical opinion has long approved of this enlightenment. Thus in England it was editorially stated in theBritish Medical Journalsome years ago (June 9, 1894): "Most medical men of an age to beget confidence in such affairs will be able to recall instances in which an ignorance, which would have been ludicrous if it had not been so sad, has been displayed on matters regarding which every woman entering on married life ought to have been accurately informed. There can, we think, be little doubt that much unhappiness and a great deal of illness would be prevented if young people of both sexes possessed a little accurate knowledge regarding the sexual relations, and were well impressed with the profound importance of selecting healthy mates. Knowledge need not necessarily be nasty, but even if it were, it certainly is not comparable in that respect with the imaginings of ignorance." In America, also, where at an annual meeting of the American Medical Association, Dr. Denslow Lewis, of Chicago, eloquently urged the need of teaching sexual hygiene to youths and girls, all the subsequent nine speakers, some of them physicians of worldwide fame, expressed their essential agreement (Medico-Legal Journal, June-Sept., 1903). Howard, again, at the end of his elaborateHistory of Matrimonial Institutions(vol. iii, p. 257) asserts the necessity for education in matters of sex, as going to the root of the marriage problem. "In the future educational programme," he remarks, "sex questions must hold an honorable place."

The distinguished Belgian novelist, Camille Lemonnier, in hisL'Homme en Amour, deals with the question of the sexual education of the young by presenting the history of a young man, brought up under the influence of the conventional and hypocritical views which teach that nudity and sex are shameful and disgusting things. In this way he passes by the opportunities of innocent and natural love, to become hopelessly enslaved at last to a sensual woman who treats him merely as the instrument of her pleasure, the last of a long succession of lovers. The book is a powerful plea for a sane, wholesome, and natural education in matters of sex. It was, however, prosecuted at Bruges, in 1901, though the trial finally ended in acquittal. Such a verdict is in harmony with the general tendency of feeling at the present time.

The old ideas, expressed by Daudet, that the facts of sex are ugly and disillusioning, and that they shock the mind of the young, are both alike entirely false. As Canon Lyttelton remarks, in urging that the laws of the transmission of life should be taught to children by the mother: "The way they receive it with native reverence, truthfulness of understanding and guileless delicacy, is nothing short of a revelation of the never-ceasing beauty of nature. People sometimes speak of the indescribable beauty of children's innocence. But I venture to say that no one quite knows what it is who has foregone the privilege of being the first to set before them the true meaning of life and birth and the mystery of their own being. Not only do we fail to build up sound knowledge in them, but we put away from ourselves the chance of learning something that must be divine." In the same way, Edward Carpenter, stating that it is easy and natural for the child to learn from the first its physical relation to its mother, remarks (Love's Coming of Age, p. 9): "A child at the age of puberty, with the unfolding of its far-down emotional and sexual nature, is eminently capable of the most sensitive, affectional and serene appreciation of whatsexmeans (generally more so as things are to-day, than its worldling parent or guardian); and can absorb the teaching, if sympathetically given, without any shock or disturbance to its sense of shame—that sense which is so natural and valuable a safeguard of early youth."

How widespread, even some years ago, had become the conviction that the sexual facts of life should be taught to girls as well as boys, was shown when the opinions of a very miscellaneous assortment of more or less prominent persons were sought on the question ("The Tree of Knowledge,"New Review, June, 1894). A small minority of two only(Rabbi Adler and Mrs. Lynn Lynton) were against such knowledge, while among the majority in favor of it were Mme. Adam, Thomas Hardy, Sir Walter Besant, Björnson, Hall Caine, Sarah Grand, Nordau, Lady Henry Somerset, Baroness von Suttner, and Miss Willard. The leaders of the woman's movement are, of course, in favor of such knowledge. Thus a meeting of the Bund für Mutterschutz at Berlin, in 1905, almost unanimously passed a resolution declaring that the early sexual enlightenment of children in the facts of the sexual life is urgently necessary (Mutterschutz, 1905, Heft 2, p. 91). It may be added that medical opinion has long approved of this enlightenment. Thus in England it was editorially stated in theBritish Medical Journalsome years ago (June 9, 1894): "Most medical men of an age to beget confidence in such affairs will be able to recall instances in which an ignorance, which would have been ludicrous if it had not been so sad, has been displayed on matters regarding which every woman entering on married life ought to have been accurately informed. There can, we think, be little doubt that much unhappiness and a great deal of illness would be prevented if young people of both sexes possessed a little accurate knowledge regarding the sexual relations, and were well impressed with the profound importance of selecting healthy mates. Knowledge need not necessarily be nasty, but even if it were, it certainly is not comparable in that respect with the imaginings of ignorance." In America, also, where at an annual meeting of the American Medical Association, Dr. Denslow Lewis, of Chicago, eloquently urged the need of teaching sexual hygiene to youths and girls, all the subsequent nine speakers, some of them physicians of worldwide fame, expressed their essential agreement (Medico-Legal Journal, June-Sept., 1903). Howard, again, at the end of his elaborateHistory of Matrimonial Institutions(vol. iii, p. 257) asserts the necessity for education in matters of sex, as going to the root of the marriage problem. "In the future educational programme," he remarks, "sex questions must hold an honorable place."

While, however, it is now widely recognized that children are entitled to sexual enlightenment, it cannot be said that this belief is widely put into practice. Many persons, who are fully persuaded that children should sooner or later be enlightened concerning the sexual sources of life, are somewhat nervously anxious as to the precise age at which this enlightenment should begin. Their latent feeling seems to be that sex is an evil, and enlightenment concerning sex also an evil, however necessary, and that the chief point is to ascertain the latest moment to which we can safely postpone this necessary evil. Such anattitude is, however, altogether wrong-headed. The child's desire for knowledge concerning the origin of himself is a perfectly natural, honest, and harmless desire, so long as it is not perverted by being thwarted. A child of four may ask questions on this matter, simply and spontaneously. As soon as the questions are put, certainly as soon as they become at all insistent, they should be answered, in the same simple and spontaneous spirit, truthfully, though according to the measure of the child's intelligence and his capacity and desire for knowledge. This period should not, and, if these indications are followed, naturally would not, in any case, be delayed beyond the sixth year. After that age even the most carefully guarded child is liable to contaminating communications from outside. Moll points out that the sexual enlightenment of girls in its various stages ought to be always a little ahead of that of boys, and as the development of girls up to the pubertal age is more precocious than that of boys, this demand is reasonable.

If the elements of sexual education are to be imparted in early childhood, it is quite clear who ought to be the teacher. There should be no question that this privilege belongs by every right to the mother. Except where a child is artificially separated from his chief parent it is indeed only the mother who has any natural opportunity of receiving and responding to these questions. It is unnecessary for her to take any initiative in the matter. The inevitable awakening of the child's intelligence and the evolution of his boundless curiosity furnish her love and skill with all opportunities for guiding her child's thoughts and knowledge. Nor is it necessary for her to possess the slightest technical information at this stage. It is only essential that she should have the most absolute faith in the purity and dignity of her physical relationship to her child, and be able to speak of it with frankness and tenderness. When that essential condition is fulfilled every mother has all the knowledge that her young child needs.

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