Maria Lischnewska, one of the ablest advocates of the methodical enlightenment of children in matters of sex (op. cit.), clearly realizes that a sane attitude towards the body lies at the root of a sound education for life.  She finds that the chief objection encountered in such education, as applied in the higher classes of schools, is “the horror of the civilized man at his own body.”  She shows that there can be no doubt that those who are engaged in the difficult task of working towards the abolition of that superstitious horror have taken up a moral task of the first importance.

Walter Gerhard, in a thoughtful and sensible paper on the educational question ("Ein Kapitel zur Erziehungsfrage,” Geschlecht und Gesellschaft, vol. i, Heft 2), points out that it is the adult who needs education in this matter—­as in so many other matters of sexual enlightenment—­considerably more than the child.  Parents educate their children from the earliest years in prudery, and vainly flatter themselves that they have thereby promoted their modesty and morality.  He records his own early life in a tropical land and accustomed to nakedness from the first.  “It was not till I came to Germany when nearly twenty that I learnt that the human body is indecent, and that it must not be shown because that ‘would arouse bad impulses.’  It was not till the human body was entirely withdrawn from my sight and after I was constantly told that there was something improper behind clothes, that I was able to understand this....  Until then I had not known that a naked body, by the mere fact of being naked, could arouse erotic feelings.  I had known erotic feelings, but they had not arisen from the sight of the naked body, but gradually blossomed from the union of our souls.”  And he draws the final moral that, if only for the sake of our children, we must learn to educate ourselves.

Forel (Die Sexuelle Frage, p. 140), speaking in entirely the same sense as Gerhard, remarks that prudery may be either caused or cured in children.  It may be caused by undue anxiety in covering their bodies and hiding from them the bodies of others.  It may be cured by making them realize that there is nothing in the body that is unnatural and that we need be ashamed of, and by encouraging bathing of the sexes in common.  He points out (p. 512) the advantages of allowing children to be acquainted with the adult forms which they will themselves some day assume, and condemns the conduct of those foolish persons who assume that children already possess the adult’s erotic feelings about the body.  That is so far from being the case that children are frequently unable to distinguish the sex of other children apart from their clothes.

At the Mannheim Congress of the German Society for Combating Venereal Diseases, specially devoted to sexual hygiene, the speakers constantly referred to the necessity of promoting familiarity