chapter I

have attempted to deal with a few only of the problems of sexual education. To discuss the subject exhaustively would have been impossible within the limits of this book; nor have I endeavoured to take into consideration the enormous mass of literature relating to the modern movement in favour of the sexual enlightenment. I have made no reference to the fact that it has recently been recommended that every girl should spend a year of service [_Dienstjahr_--analogous to the term of military service obligatory on all males in Germany] in hospitals, asylums, &c., whereby she would gain enlightenment concerning many things which will be of value to her in her subsequent married life. All such proposals are so much matters of detail, that I have thought it inadvisable to discuss them here.

The most important requirement of all is certainly a good educator--a word used here in the widest possible signification. The best of all educators for the child should be its own mother; although we may agree with the assertion recently made by Eschle[152] and others, that the father has important duties to fulfil as instructor, even during the child's first year of life. Nevertheless, the father, even if his professional training gives him especial skill in these directions, is not really likely to do very much in the educational way for his infant offspring. It is to the mother, above all, that the care of infants and young children is of necessity entrusted. We have, however, to remember that a large proportion of mothers, especially those belonging to the ranks of the proletariat, take part in the work of breadwinning for the family, and are thus prevented from giving as much attention to their children as might be wished. But in the families of the well-to-do there is often no question of the mother herself playing the principal part in the education of her children, since it is customary for her to depute so many of her maternal duties to hired substitutes. It has recently been maintained that it is to the Woman's Movement that we owe the fact that the question of the sexual enlightenment has now become a live one; but this is certainly an overstatement, though it is not to be denied that women have had some influence in this direction. But if the women who play a prominent part in the Woman's Movement would do more than they have done as yet to impress upon the women of the well-to-do classes an understanding of their duties towards their children, they would certainly be doing excellent work. No paid substitute can adequately replace for the child the benefits it will derive if its mother herself does all that she could and should do. A mother who seriously devotes herself to the care of her child, need have no anxiety about the risks of its being misused by others for sexual purposes. Such a mother keeps herself fully acquainted with her child's sentiments. She is in a position to choose the best moment for effecting the child's sexual enlightenment, and she can best judge when the use of the stork story is no longer justified. Of such a mother, a child far more readily makes a confidant. Moreover, if the mother devotes a great deal of time and pains to the personal care of her child, this has, in the case of a boy, the great advantage of inculcating a greater respect for the female sex in general than is apt to be found in boys to-day. I consider this last-mentioned point to be one of the utmost importance in relation to the sexual enlightenment, for only in such a way can the boy when grown to manhood be led instinctively to refrain from the seduction of girls--with all the misery which such a course usually involves for the victims. Similarly, a young man brought up to respect women will refrain from making a mock of pregnancy, whether "legitimate" or "illegitimate." When we see a young woman bearing a new life in her womb, owing her position it may be to all the subtle arts of the seducer, and note how cruelly she is treated by the law and what scorn and contempt are poured upon her by society and by the individual, we cannot fail to welcome most heartily the movement for the Protection of Motherhood (_Mutterschutzbewegung_) which has recently made such progress in Germany. When children are properly educated, there is reason to hope that sexual matters will be less often treated in an obscene spirit than is the case to-day. Nor need we fear, when such education becomes the rule, that every allusion to sexual things may involve dangers to the child. Precisely because the sexual life will then be known to the child in a natural way, will there be less reason to dread the deliberate cultivation by children of sexual topics of conversation. When at school the love adventures of Mars and Venus are the subject of the lesson, in children thus educated no unclean thoughts need arise. It must never be forgotten, however, that when the imagination has been perverted, opportunities for unclean thoughts recur with extraordinary frequency; and indeed by no means whatever can such opportunities be altogether avoided. Since this is so, we must strengthen the child against the dangers it will inevitably encounter, and must be careful not to pervert its imagination by a false prudery.

Of course we must avoid leading the child to dwell too much upon sexual topics, and fortunately human beings have numerous other interests. The sphere of the sexual must be regarded as a fraction merely of the general educational field. The inculcation of true ideas of morality, and of a sense of honour not confined to externals but one by which the entire being is permeated--these will be the safest essentials of a good sexual and general education.

[1] _Infancy_ appears to be the best English term to represent the German _Sänglingsalter_, literally "age of suckling." It is true that the _legal_ denotation of the term _infancy_ is "the period from a person's birth to the attainment of the age of twenty-one years," but in common speech an _infant_ is "a child during the first two or three years of life," whilst writers on _infant mortality_ restrict the term to the sense employed in the text. Thus Newman, in _The Health of the State_ (p. 108), writes: "Infants are children under twelve months of age."--TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.

[2] _Involuntary Sexual Orgasm._--This is a very cumbrous rendering of the German _Pollution_. In English we greatly need a general term, first, to denote all involuntary emissions of semen, whether nocturnal or diurnal; and, secondly, to denote involuntary sexual orgasm in the female as well as in the male. In the case of the female, the term "seminal emission" is inapplicable; but the term "pollution" may be applied in English (as it is in German) to such phenomena in either sex. By American writers the term "pollution" is now generally used (_e.g._, Allen, "Disorders of the Male Sexual Organs," _Twentieth Century Practice_, vol. vii. p. 612 _et seq._). My first inclination, therefore, was to adopt the rendering "pollution" in this translation. But this word inevitably connotes the ideas of physical uncleanness and moral defilement, and its use would thus assist the survival of medieval ideas of the essentially corrupt nature of sexual passion--such ideas as are exemplified by the quaint survival among certain "occultists" of the medieval doctrine of _incubi_ and _succubi_, by the belief that sexual dreams are induced by the "thought-forms" of other persons tormented by ungratified sexual desire! For this reason I have not attempted to acclimatise the word "pollution" in this country.--TRANSLATOR'S NOTE.

[3] _L'Hygiène sexuelle_, Paris, 1895, p. 27.

[4] Thalhofer, _Die Sexuelle Pädagogik bei den Philanthropen_, Kempten, 1907.

[5] Rudeck, _Die Liebe_ (Leipzig, undated), p. 158.

[6] Groos, _Die Spiele der Tiere_ (_The Games of Animals_), Jena, 1896.

[7] See a translation by Dr. Brill, of New York, of Freud's _Selected Papers on Hysteria and other Psychoneuroses_ (1909).

[8] _Die Störungen der Geschlechtsfunctionen des Mannes_ (_The Disturbances of the Male Sexual Functions_), 2nd ed., Vienna, 1901, p. 8.

[9] Otto Adler, _Die mangelhafte Geschlechtsempfindung des Weibes_ (_Inadequacy of Sexual Sensation in Woman_), Berlin, 1904, p. 54 _et seq._

[10] Marthe Francillon, _Essai sur la Puberté chez la Femme_, Paris, 1906.

[11] _Man and Woman_, 4th ed., London, 1904.

[12] _Der Körper des Kindes_ (_The Body of the Child_), Stuttgart, 1903.

[13] Halban, _Die Entstehung des Geschlechtscharakters_ (_The Origin of Sexual Differentiation_), Archiv für Gynäkologie, vol. lxx., Heft 2. p. 268.

[14] _Man and Woman_, London.

[15] _Weib und Mann_, Berlin, 1897, p, 116.

[16] Meumann, _Vorlesungen zur Einführung in die experimentelle Pädagogik und ihre psychologische Grundlagen_ (_Introductory Lectures on Experimental Pedagogy and its Psychological Basis_), Leipzig, 1907, vol. i. p. 145.

[17] _Zeitschrift für Psychologie_, Leipzig, 1906, p. 384.

[18] _Geschlecht und Krankheit_ (_Sex and Disease_), Halle, 1903.

[19] _Die Hysterie im Kindesalter_ (_Hysteria in Childhood_), 2nd ed., Halle, 1906.

[20] _Die Hysterie des Kindes_ (_Hysteria in the Child_), p. 8, Berlin, 1905.

[21] _Vorlesungen über Störungen der Sprache_ (_Lectures on Disturbances of Speech_), p. 105. Berlin, 1893.

[22] _Hautkrankheiten und Sexualität_ (_Diseases of the Skin in Relation to Sex_). Reprinted from the _Wiener Klinik_, 1906.

[23] William Douglas Morrison, _Jugendliche Uebeltäter_ (_Youthful Delinquents_), p. 28. Leipzig, 1899.

[24] _Die Seele des Kindes_ (_The Soul of the Child_) p. 147, 4th ed., Leipzig, 1895.

[25] Although in various other parts of this book I draw attention to the fact that the sexual processes of childhood described by me are not to be witnessed in every child, but that on the contrary there are many children in whom such sexual phenomena are by no means to be observed, I take this additional opportunity of stating categorically that erections naturally occur in children less frequently than in adults; they are in fact notably less common in the former, but nevertheless erection is not, in my opinion, a pathological manifestation even in very early childhood. The comparatively slight capacity for erection possessed by children, as compared with adults, is, for example, shown by the fact to which Jullien draws attention, in his work _Seltenere und weniger bekannte Tripperformen_ (_Rare and Little Known Forms of Gonorrhoea_), Vienna and Leipzig, 1907, that the painful erections (chordee) which so commonly accompany gonorrhoea in adults, are very rare indeed in the case of gonorrhoea in children, and even in the case of older children are hardly ever observed.

[26] _Op. cit._, p. 8.

[27] _The Hygiene of Love._

[28] _Lehrbuch der Gerichtlichen Medizin_ (_Text-book of Forensic Medicine_), p. 58, 7th ed., Vienna, 1895.

[29] Pauli Zacchiae, _Quaestiones Medico-Legales_, lib. i, p. 26, Lipsiæ, 1630.

[30] _Lehrbuch der Gerichtlichen Medizin_ (_Text-book of Forensic Medicine_), p. 64, Stuttgart, 1895.

[31] In the next