of elementary hygienic instruction placed in the possession of every young man and woman.  In a sphere that is necessarily so intimate medical organization and legal resort can never be all-sufficing; knowledge is needed at every step in every individual to guide and even to awaken that sense of personal moral responsibility which must here always rule.  Wherever the importance of these questions is becoming acutely realized—­and notably at the Congresses of the German Society for Combating Venereal Disease—­the problem is resolving itself mainly into one of education.[252] And although opinion and practice in this matter are to-day more advanced in Germany than elsewhere the conviction of this necessity is becoming scarcely less pronounced in all other civilized countries, in England and America as much as in France and the Scandinavian lands.

A knowledge of the risks of disease by sexual intercourse, both in and out of marriage,—­and indeed, apart from sexual intercourse altogether,—­is a further stage of that sexual education which, as we have already seen, must begin, so far as the elements are concerned, at a very early age.  Youths and girls should be taught, as the distinguished Austrian economist, Anton von Menger wrote, shortly before his death, in his excellent little book, Neue Sittenlehre, that the production of children is a crime when the parents are syphilitic or otherwise incompetent through transmissible chronic diseases.  Information about venereal disease should not indeed be given until after puberty is well established.  It is unnecessary and undesirable to impart medical knowledge to young boys and girls and to warn them against risks they are yet little liable to be exposed to.  It is when the age of strong sexual instinct, actual or potential, begins that the risks, under some circumstances, of yielding to it, need to be clearly present to the mind.  No one who reflects on the actual facts of life ought to doubt that it is in the highest degree desirable that every adolescent youth and girl ought to receive some elementary instruction in the general facts of venereal disease, tuberculosis, and alcoholism.  These three “plagues of civilization” are so widespread, so subtle and manifold in their operation, that everyone comes in contact with them during life, and that everyone is liable to suffer, even before he is aware, perhaps hopelessly and forever, from the results of that contact.  Vague declamation about immorality and vaguer warnings against it have no effect and possess no meaning, while rhetorical exaggeration is unnecessary.  A very simple and concise statement of the actual facts concerning the evils that beset life is quite sufficient and adequate, and quite essential.  To ignore this need is only possible to those who take a dangerously frivolous view of life.