Studies in the Psychology of Sex Volume Vi Part 2

[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 Ftus, p. 475) cautiously remarks that the question is difficult to decide. Forel also (Die s.e.xuelle Frage, fourth edition, p. 81), who is not prepared to advocate complete s.e.xual abstinence during a normal pregnancy, admits that it is a rather difficult question.

[15]

This point is discussed, for instance, by Seropian in a Paris Thesis (Frequence comparee des Causes de l'Accouchement Premature, 1907); he concludes that coitus during pregnancy is a more frequent cause of premature confinement than is commonly supposed, especially in primiparae, 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.

CHAPTER II.

s.e.xUAL EDUCATION.

Nurture Necessary as Well as Breed-Precocious Manifestations of the s.e.xual Impulse-Are They to be Regarded as Normal?-The s.e.xual Play of Children-The Emotion of Love in Childhood-Are Town Children More Precocious s.e.xually Than Country Children?-Children's Ideas Concerning the Origin of Babies-Need for Beginning the s.e.xual Education of Children in Early Years-The Importance of Early Training in Responsibility-Evil of the Old Doctrine of Silence in Matters of s.e.x-The Evil Magnified When Applied to Girls-The Mother the Natural and Best Teacher-The Morbid Influence of Artificial Mystery in s.e.x Matters-Books on s.e.xual Enlightenment of the Young-Nature of the Mother's Task-s.e.xual Education in the School-The Value of Botany-Zoology-s.e.xual Education After p.u.b.erty-The Necessity of Counteracting Quack Literature-Danger of Neglecting to Prepare for the First Onset of Menstruation-The Right Att.i.tude Towards Woman's s.e.xual Life-The Vital Necessity of the Hygiene of Menstruation During Adolescence-Such Hygiene Compatible with the Educational and Social Equality of the s.e.xes-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 s.e.x-Influence of These Factors on a Woman's Fate in Marriage-Lectures and Addresses on s.e.xual Hygiene-The Doctor's Part in s.e.xual Education-p.u.b.ertal Initiation Into the Ideal World-The Place of the Religious and Ethical Teacher-The Initiation Rites of Savages Into Manhood and Womanhood-The s.e.xual Influence of Literature-The s.e.xual 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 s.e.x. That is far from being the case. We are, on the contrary, going to the root of s.e.x. 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 the early 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 ma.s.s is not only well-nurtured but well-bred. And in no part of life so much as in the s.e.xual relations.h.i.+ps is the influence of good breeding more decisive. An instructive ill.u.s.tration 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 prost.i.tute 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 s.e.xual 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 prost.i.tute 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 pa.s.sed beyond the foundations and potentialities of the s.e.xual 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 sometimes occurs at birth.[19] It seems clear that nervous and psychic s.e.xual 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 p.u.b.erty 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 s.e.xuality in childhood, such manifestations are still sufficiently frequent to make it impossible to say that s.e.xual hygiene may be completely ignored until p.u.b.erty is approaching.

Precocious physical development occurs as a somewhat rare variation. W. Roger Williams ("Precocious s.e.xual Development with Abstracts of over One Hundred Cases," British Gynaecological 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns contain no spermatozoa, and, as Furbringer and Moll have found, they may even be absent at sixteen, or later. In female children precocious s.e.xual development is less commonly a.s.sociated with general increase of bodily development than in boys. (An individual case of early s.e.xual development in a girl of five has been completely described and figured in the Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, 1896, Heft 4, p. 262.)

Precocious s.e.xual impulses are generally vague, occasional, and more or less innocent. A case of rare and p.r.o.nounced character, in which a child, a boy, from the age of two had been s.e.xually attracted to girls and women, and directed all his thoughts and actions to s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual causation, and that the s.e.xual impulse constantly manifests itself at a very early age. The belief that the s.e.xual 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 s.e.xuality with it into the world, s.e.xual sensations accompany it through the days of lactation and childhood, and very few children can fail to experience s.e.xual activities and feelings before the period of p.u.b.erty" (Freud, "Zur s.e.xuellen Aufklarung der Kinder," Soziale Medizin und Hygiene, Bd. ii, 1907; cf., for details, the same author's Drei Abhandlungen zur s.e.xualtheorie, 1905). Moll, on the other hand, considers that Freud's views on s.e.xuality 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 s.e.xualleben des Kindes, p. 154). Moll believes also that psycho-s.e.xual manifestations appearing after the age of eight are not pathological; children who are weakly or of bad heredity are not seldom s.e.xually precocious, but, on the other hand, Moll has known children of eight or nine with strongly developed s.e.xual impulses, who yet become finely developed men.

Rudimentary s.e.xual activities in childhood, accompanied by s.e.xual feelings, must indeed-when they are not too p.r.o.nounced 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 ill.u.s.tration, 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 his Spiele der Menschen, Groos applies this idea to the s.e.xual 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-relations.h.i.+ps. Emil Schultze-Malkowsky (Geschlecht und Gesellschaft, Bd. ii, p. 370) reproduces some scenes from the life of a little girl of seven clearly ill.u.s.trating the exact nature of the s.e.xual manifestation at this age.

A kind of rudimentary s.e.xual intercourse between children, as Bloch has remarked (Beitrage, etc., Bd. ii, p. 254), occurs in many parts of the world, and is recognized by their elders as play. This is, for instance, the case among the Bawenda of the Transvaal (Zeitschrift fur 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). G.o.dard (Egypte et Palestine, 1867, p. 105) noted the s.e.xual play of the boys and girls in Cairo. In New Mexico W. A. Hammond (s.e.xual Impotence, p. 107) has seen boys and girls attempting a playful s.e.xual 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 cla.s.s. Moll remarks on its frequency (Libido s.e.xualis, Bd. i, p. 277), and the committee of evangelical pastors, in their investigation of German rural morality (Die Geschlechtliche-sittliche Verhaltnisse, Bd. i, p. 102) found that children who are not yet of school age make attempts at coitus. The s.e.xual 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 cooperation of the s.e.xual impulse, and still less have they any element of love. But emotions of love, scarcely if at all distinguishable from adult s.e.xual 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 s.e.x 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 s.e.xes," 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 the whole, 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 s.e.xual organs; erection of the p.e.n.i.s and hyperaemia of the female s.e.xual 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 s.e.x bears much the same relation to that between adults as the flower does to the fruit, and has about as little of physical s.e.xuality 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, const.i.tute most frequently the first and sole manifestation of the s.e.xual impulse in childhood.

It is often stated that it is easier for children to preserve their s.e.xual innocence in the country than in the town, and that only in cities is s.e.xuality 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 s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual life clear to all; there is less need or regard for decorum; speech is plainer; supervision is impossible, and the amplest opportunities for s.e.xual intimacy are at hand. If the city may perhaps be said to favor unchast.i.ty of thought in the young, the country may certainly be said to favor unchast.i.ty of act.

The elaborate investigations of the Committee of Lutheran pastors into s.e.xual morality (Die Geschlechtich-sittliche Verhaltnisse im Deutschen Reiche), published a few years ago, demonstrate amply the s.e.xual freedom in rural Germany, and Moll, who is decidedly of opinion that the country enjoys no relative freedom from s.e.xuality, 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 in La Terre correctly describes the life of French villages. But the ways of a Russian village, where I pa.s.sed 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 s.e.xual innocence more easily in a town than in the country. There are, no doubt, many exceptions to this rule. But the functions of the s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual things in the towns people veil their thought more; even the lower cla.s.s 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 prost.i.tutes in the street every day without distinguis.h.i.+ng 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 s.e.xual 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 as.e.xual 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 s.e.xuality, 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 malicious amus.e.m.e.nt of foreigners, there are really many more young people in England who remain chaste than in the countries which treat s.e.xual 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 chast.i.ty is, if it is based on mere ignorance, its possessor is exposed to terrible dangers.

The question of s.e.xual hygiene, more especially in its special aspect of s.e.xual enlightenment, is not, however, dependent on the fact that in some children the psychic and nervous manifestation of s.e.x 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 s.e.x. 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. "G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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, "s.e.xual-Mythen," Geschlecht und Gesellschaft, vol. i, Heft 5, 1906, p. 176, and P. Nacke, Neurologische Centralblatt, No. 17, 1907). Nacke 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 ("Islandischer Brauch und Volksglaube," etc., Zeitschrift fur 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 G.o.d made the baby and the mother bore it, and on that account is now ill. In the northwest it is said that G.o.d made the baby and gave it to the mother. Elsewhere it is said that G.o.d 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s, or from below her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, 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 cla.s.s, 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 s.e.x being left unguarded. In Elsa.s.s 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 s.e.xual facts of life (S. Freud, "Ueber Infantile s.e.xualtheorien," s.e.xual-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 p.e.n.i.s 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 c.l.i.toris is relatively larger and more p.e.n.i.s-like helps to confirm this view which Freud connects with the tendency in later life to erotic dream of women furnished with a p.e.n.i.s. This theory, as Freud also remarks, favors the growth of h.o.m.os.e.xuality when its germs are present. The second theory is the faecal theory of the origin of babies. The child, who perhaps thinks his mother has a p.e.n.i.s, and is in any case ignorant of the v.a.g.i.n.a, concludes that the baby is brought into the world by an action a.n.a.logous to the action of the bowels. The third theory, which is perhaps less prevalent than the others, Freud terms the s.a.d.i.s.tic theory of coitus. The child realizes that his father must have taken some sort of part in his production. The theory that s.e.xual intercourse consists in violence has in it a trace of truth, but seems to be arrived at rather obscurely. The child's own s.e.xual 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 s.e.x. It is perhaps a little late in the day to regard it as a question, but so it is among us, although three thousand five hundred 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 s.e.xual 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 a.s.sociations 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 suss'." 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 s.e.xual emotions. So far as boys are concerned, we leave instruction in matters of s.e.x, 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 cla.s.s in the s.e.xual initiation of the children of the middle cla.s.s has been ill.u.s.trated in dealing with "The s.e.xual Impulse in Women" in vol. iii, of these Studies, and need not now be further discussed. I would only here say a word, in pa.s.sing, 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 have never, in youth, heard a bad or improper word on s.e.x-relations.h.i.+ps from a servant-girl, although servant-girls followed one another in our house like suns.h.i.+ne and showers in April, and there was always a relation of comrades.h.i.+p 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 s.e.xual indifference to them, and a natural expectation that the male should take the active part when a s.e.xual 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 att.i.tude 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 s.e.x 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 chast.i.ty lies, not in the multiplication of laws and policemen, but largely in women's knowledge of the dangers of s.e.x 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 s.e.x. 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 s.e.xual enlightenment, and it is almost with amus.e.m.e.nt 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 Poetae, 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 his L'Homme en Amour, deals with the question of the s.e.xual 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 s.e.x are shameful and disgusting things. In this way he pa.s.ses 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 s.e.x. 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 s.e.x 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 p.u.b.erty, with the unfolding of its far-down emotional and s.e.xual nature, is eminently capable of the most sensitive, affectional and serene appreciation of what s.e.x means (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 s.e.xual facts of life should be taught to girls as well as boys, was shown when the opinions of a very miscellaneous a.s.sortment 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, Bjornson, 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 fur Mutterschutz at Berlin, in 1905, almost unanimously pa.s.sed a resolution declaring that the early s.e.xual enlightenment of children in the facts of the s.e.xual 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 the British Medical Journal some 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 s.e.xes possessed a little accurate knowledge regarding the s.e.xual 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 a.s.sociation, Dr. Denslow Lewis, of Chicago, eloquently urged the need of teaching s.e.xual 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 elaborate History of Matrimonial Inst.i.tutions (vol. iii, p. 257) a.s.serts the necessity for education in matters of s.e.x, as going to the root of the marriage problem. "In the future educational programme," he remarks, "s.e.x questions must hold an honorable place."

While, however, it is now widely recognized that children are ent.i.tled to s.e.xual 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 s.e.xual 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 s.e.x is an evil, and enlightenment concerning s.e.x 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 an att.i.tude 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 s.e.xual 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 p.u.b.ertal age is more precocious than that of boys, this demand is reasonable.

If the elements of s.e.xual 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 relations.h.i.+p 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.

Among the best authorities, both men and women, in all the countries where this matter is attracting attention, there seems now to be unanimity of opinion in favor of the elementary facts of the baby's relations.h.i.+p to its mother being explained to the child by the mother as soon as the child begins to ask questions. Thus in Germany Moll has repeatedly argued in this sense; he insists that s.e.xual enlightenment should be mainly a private and individual matter; that in schools there should be no general and personal warnings about masturbation, etc. (though at a later age he approves of instruction in regard to venereal diseases), but that the mother is the proper person to impart intimate knowledge to the child, and that any age is suitable for the commencement of such enlightenment, provided it is put into a form fitted for the age (Moll, op. cit., p. 264).

At the Mannheim meeting of the Congress of the German Society for Combating Venereal Disease, when the question of s.e.xual enlightenment formed the sole subject of discussion, the opinion in favor of early teaching by the mother prevailed. "It is the mother who must, in the first place, be made responsible for the child's clear understanding of s.e.xual things, so often lacking," said Frau Krukenberg ("Die Aufgabe der Mutter," s.e.xualpadagogik, p. 13), while Max Enderlin, a teacher, said on the same occasion ("Die s.e.xuelle Frage in die Volksschule," id., p. 35): "It is the mother who has to give the child his first explanations, for it is to his mother that he first naturally comes with his questions." In England, Canon Lyttelton, who is distinguished among the heads of public schools not least by his clear and admirable statements on these questions, states (Mothers and Sons, p. 99) that the mother's part in the s.e.xual enlightenment and s.e.xual guardians.h.i.+p of her son is of paramount importance, and should begin at the earliest years. J. H. Badley, another schoolmaster ("The s.e.x Difficulty," Broad Views, June, 1904), also states that the mother's part comes first. Northcote (Christianity and s.e.x Problems, p. 25) believes that the duty of the parents is primary in this matter, the family doctor and the schoolmaster coming in at a later stage. In America, Dr. Mary Wood Allen, who occupies a prominent and influential position in women's social movements, urges (in Child-Confidence Rewarded, and other pamphlets) that a mother should begin to tell her child these things as soon as he begins to ask questions, the age of four not being too young, and explains how this may be done, giving examples of its happy results in promoting a sweet confidence between the child and his mother.

If, as a few believe should be the case, the first initiation is delayed to the tenth year or even later, there is the difficulty that it is no longer so easy to talk simply and naturally about such things; the mother is beginning to feel too shy to speak for the first time about these difficult subjects to a son or a daughter who is nearly as big as herself. She feels that she can only do it awkwardly and ineffectively, and she probably decides not to do it at all. Thus an atmosphere of mystery is created with all the embarra.s.sing and perverting influences which mystery encourages.

There can be no doubt that, more especially in highly intelligent children with vague and unspecialized yet insistent s.e.xual impulses, the artificial mystery with which s.e.x is too often clothed not only accentuates the natural curiosity but also tends to favor the morbid intensity and even prurience of the s.e.xual impulse. This has long been recognized. Dr. Beddoes wrote at the beginning of the nineteenth century: "It is in vain that we dissemble to ourselves the eagerness with which children of either s.e.x seek to satisfy themselves concerning the conformation of the other. No degree of reserve in the heads of families, no contrivances, no care to put books of one description out of sight and to garble others, has perhaps, with any one set of children, succeeded in preventing or stifling this kind of curiosity. No part of the history of human thought would perhaps be more singular than the stratagems devised by young people in different situations to make themselves masters or witnesses of the secret. And every discovery, due to their own inquiries, can but be so much oil poured upon an imagination in flames" (T. Beddoes, Hygeia, 1802, vol. iii, p. 59). Kaan, again, in one of the earliest books on morbid s.e.xuality, sets down mystery as one of the causes of psychopathia s.e.xualis. Marro (La p.u.b.erta, p. 299) points out how the veil of mystery thrown over s.e.xual matters merely serves to concentrate attention on them. The distinguished Dutch writer Multatuli, in one of his letters (quoted with approval by Freud), remarks on the dangers of hiding things from boys and girls in a veil of mystery, pointing out that this must only heighten the curiosity of children, and so far from keeping them pure, which mere ignorance can never do, heats and perverts their imaginations. Mrs. Mary Wood Allen, also, warns the mother (op. cit., p. 5) against the danger of allowing any air of embarra.s.sing mystery to creep over these things. "If the instructor feels any embarra.s.sment in answering the queries of the child, he is not fitted to be the teacher, for the feeling of embarra.s.sment will, in some subtle way, communicate itself to the child, and he will experience an indefinable sense of offended delicacy which is both unnecessary and undesirable. Purification of one's own thought is, then, the first step towards teaching the truth purely. Why," she adds, "is death, the gateway out of life, any more dignified or pathetic than birth, the gateway into life? Or why is the taking of earthly life a more awful fact than the giving of life?" Mrs. Ennis Richmond, in a book of advice to mothers which contains many wise and true things, says: "I want to insist, more strongly than upon anything else, that it is the secrecy that surrounds certain parts of the body and their functions that gives them their danger in the child's thought. Little children, from earliest years, are taught to think of these parts of their body as mysterious, and not only so, but that they are mysterious because they are unclean. Children have not even a name for them. If you have to speak to your child, you allude to them mysteriously and in a half-whisper as 'that little part of you that you don't speak of,' or words to that effect. Before everything it is important that your child should have a good working name for these parts of his body, and for their functions, and that he should be taught to use and to hear the names, and that as naturally and openly as though he or you were speaking of his head or his foot. Convention has, for various reasons, made it impossible to speak in this way in public. But you can, at any rate, break through this in the nursery. There this rule of convention has no advantage, and many a serious disadvantage. It is easy to say to a child, the first time he makes an 'awkward' remark in public: 'Look here, laddie, you may say what you like to me or to daddy, but, for some reason or other, one does not talk about these' (only say what things) 'in public.' Only let your child make the remark in public before you speak (never mind the shock to your caller's feelings), don't warn him against doing so" (Ennis Richmond, Boyhood, p. 60). s.e.x must always be a mystery, but, as Mrs. Richmond rightly says, "the real and true mysteries of generation and birth are very different from the vulgar secretiveness with which custom surrounds them."

The question as to the precise names to be given to the more private bodily parts and functions is sometimes a little difficult to solve. Every mother will naturally follow her own instincts, and probably her own traditions, in this matter. I have elsewhere pointed out (in the study of "The Evolution of Modesty") how widespread and instinctive is the tendency to adopt constantly new euphemisms in this field. The ancient and simple words, which in England a great poet like Chaucer could still use rightly and naturally, are so often dropped in the mud by the vulgar that there is an instinctive hesitation nowadays in applying them to beautiful uses. They are, however, unquestionably the best, and, in their origin, the most dignified and expressive words. Many persons are of opinion that on this account they should be rescued from the mud, and their sacredness taught to children. A medical friend writes that he always taught his son that the vulgar s.e.x names are really beautiful words of ancient origin, and that when we understand them aright we cannot possibly see in them any motive for low jesting. They are simple, serious and solemn words, connoting the most central facts of life, and only to ignorant and plebeian vulgarity can they cause obscene mirth. An American man of science, who has privately and anonymously printed some pamphlets on s.e.x questions, also takes this view, and consistently and methodically uses the ancient and simple words. I am of opinion that this is the ideal to be sought, but that there are obvious difficulties at present in the way of attaining it. In any case, however, the mother should be in possession of a very precise vocabulary for all the bodily parts and acts which it concerns her children to know.

It is sometimes said that at this early age children should not be told, even in a simple and elementary form, the real facts of their origin but should, instead, hear a fairy-tale having in it perhaps some kind of symbolic truth. This contention may be absolutely rejected, without thereby, in any degree, denying the important place which fairy-tales hold in the imagination of young children. Fairy-tales have a real value to the child; they are a mental food he needs, if he is not to be spiritually starved; to deprive him of fairy-tales at this age is to do him a wrong which can never be made up at any subsequent age. But not only are s.e.x matters too vital even in childhood to be safely made matter for a fairy-tale, but the real facts are themselves as wonderful as any fairy-tale, and appeal to the child's imagination with as much force as a fairy-tale.

Even, however, if there were no other reasons against telling children fairy-tales of s.e.x instead of the real facts, there is one reason which ought to be decisive with every mother who values her influence over her child. He will very quickly discover, either by information from others or by his own natural intelligence, that the fairy-tale, that was told him in reply to a question about a simple matter of fact, was a lie. With that discovery his mother's influence over him in all such matters vanishes for ever, for not only has a child a horror of being duped, but he is extremely sensitive about any rebuff of this kind, and never repeats what he has been made to feel was a mistake to be ashamed of. He will not trouble his mother with any more questions on this matter; he will not confide in her; he will himself learn the art of telling "fairy-tales" about s.e.x matters. He had turned to his mother in trust; she had not responded with equal trust, and she must suffer the punishment, as Henriette Furth puts it, of seeing "the love and trust of her son stolen from her by the first boy he makes friends with in the street." When, as sometimes happens (Moll mentions a case), a mother goes on repeating these silly stories to a girl or boy of seven who is secretly well-informed, she only degrades herself in her child's eyes. It is this fatal mistake, so often made by mothers, which at first leads them to imagine that their children are so innocent, and in later years causes them many hours of bitterness because they realize they do not possess their children's trust. In the matter of trust it is for the mother to take the first step; the children who do not trust their mothers are, for the most part, merely remembering the lesson they learned at their mother's knee.

The number of little books and pamphlets dealing with the question of the s.e.xual enlightenment of the young-whether intended to be read by the young or offering guidance to mothers and teachers in the task of imparting knowledge-has become very large indeed during recent years in America, England, and especially Germany, where there has been of late an enormous production of such literature. The late Ben Elmy, writing under the pseudonym of "Ellis Ethelmer," published two booklets, Baby Buds, and The Human Flower (issued by Mrs. Wolstenholme Elmy, Buxton House, Congleton), which state the facts in a simple and delicate manner, though the author was not a notably reliable guide on the scientific aspects of these questions. A charming conversation between a mother and child, from a French source, is reprinted by Edward Carpenter at the end of his Love's Coming of Age. How We Are Born, by Mrs. N. J. (apparently a Russian lady writing in English), prefaced by J. H. Badley, is satisfactory. Mention may also be made of The Wonder of Life, by Mary Tudor Pole. Margaret Morley's Song of Life, an American book, which I have not seen, has been highly praised. Most of these books are intended for quite young children, and while they explain more or less clearly the origin of babies, nearly always starting with the facts of plant life, they touch very slightly, if at all, on the relations of the s.e.xes.

Mrs. Ennis Richmond's books, largely addressed to mothers, deal with these questions in a very sane, direct, and admirable manner, and Canon Lyttelton's books, discussing such questions generally, are also excellent. Most of the books now to be mentioned are intended to be read by boys and girls who have reached the age of p.u.b.erty. They refer more or less precisely to s.e.xual relations.h.i.+ps, and they usually touch on masturbation. The Story of Life, written by a very accomplished woman, the late Ellice Hopkins, is somewhat vague, and introduces too many exalted religious ideas. Arthur Trewby's Healthy Boyhood is a little book of wholesome tendency; it deals specially with masturbation. A Talk with Boys About Themselves and A Talk with Girls About Themselves, both by Edward Bruce Kirk (the latter book written in conjunction with a lady) deal with general as well as s.e.xual hygiene. There could be no better book to put into the hands of a boy or girl at p.u.b.erty than M. A. Warren's Almost Fourteen, written by an American school teacher in 1892. It was a most charming and delicately written book, which could not have offended the innocence of the most sensitive maiden. Nothing, however, is sacred to prurience, and it was easy for the prurient to capture the law and obtain (in 1897) legal condemnation of this book as "obscene." Anything which s.e.xually excites a prurient mind is, it is true, "obscene" for that mind, for, as Mr. Theodore Schroeder remarks, obscenity is "the contribution of the reading mind," but we need such books as this in order to diminish the number of prurient minds, and the condemnation of so entirely admirable a book makes, not for morality, but for immorality. I am told that the book was subsequently issued anew with most of its best portions omitted, and it is stated by Schroeder (Liberty of Speech and Press Essential to Purity Propaganda, p. 34) that the author was compelled to resign his position as a public school princ.i.p.al. Maria Lischnewska's Geschlechtliche Belehrung der Kinder (reprinted from Mutterschutz, 1905, Heft 4 and 5) is a most admirable and thorough discussion of the whole question of s.e.xual education, though the writer is more interested in the teacher's share in this question than in the mother's. Suggestions to mothers are contained in Hugo Salus, Wo kommen die Kinder her?, E. Stiehl, Eine Mutterpflicht, and many other books. Dr. Alfred Kind strongly recommends Ludwig Gurlitt's Der Verkehr mit meinem Kindern, more especially in its combination of s.e.xual education with artistic education. Many similar books are referred to by Bloch, in his s.e.xual Life of Our Time, Ch. xxvi.

I have enumerated the names of these little books because they are frequently issued in a semi-private manner, and are seldom easy to procure or to hear of. The propagation of such books seems to be felt to be almost a disgraceful action, only to be performed by stealth. And such a feeling seems not unnatural when we see, as in the case of the author of Almost Fourteen, that a nominally civilized country, instead of loading with honors a man who has worked for its moral and physical welfare, seeks so far as it can to ruin him.

I may add that while it would usually be very helpful to a mother to be acquainted with a few of the booklets I have named, she would do well, in actually talking to her children, to rely mainly on her own knowledge and inspiration.