hearing of masturbation, and also that the warning against masturbation might encourage the practice.  It is, however, becoming more and more clearly realized that ignorance, even if it can be maintained, is a perilous possession, while the teaching that consists, as it should, in a loving mother’s counsel to the child from his earliest years to treat his sexual parts with care and respect, can only lead to masturbation in the child who is already irresistibly impelled to it.  Most of the sex manuals for boys touch on masturbation, sometimes exaggerating its dangers; such exaggeration should be avoided, for it leads to far worse evils than those it attempts to prevent.  It seems undesirable that any warnings about masturbation should form part of school instruction, unless under very special circumstances.  The sexual instruction imparted in the school on sexual as on other subjects should be absolutely impersonal and objective.

At this point we approach one of the difficulties in the way of sexual enlightenment:  the ignorance or unwisdom of the would-be teachers.  This difficulty at present exists both in the home and the school, while it destroys the value of many manuals written for the sexual instruction of the young.  The mother, who ought to be the child’s confidant and guide in matters of sexual education, and could naturally be so if left to her own healthy instincts, has usually been brought up in false traditions which it requires a high degree of intelligence and character to escape from; the school-teacher, even if only called upon to give instruction in natural history, is oppressed by the same traditions, and by false shame concerning the whole subject of sex; the writer of manuals on sex has often only freed himself from these bonds in order to advocate dogmatic, unscientific, and sometimes mischievous opinions which have been evolved in entire ignorance of the real facts.  As Moll says (Das Sexualleben des Kindes, p. 276), necessary as sexual enlightenment is, we cannot help feeling a little skeptical as to its results so long as those who ought to enlighten are themselves often in need of enlightenment.  He refers also to the fact that even among competent authorities there is difference of opinion concerning important matters, as, for instance, whether masturbation is physiological at the first development of the sexual impulse and how far sexual abstinence is beneficial.  But it is evident that the difficulties due to false tradition and ignorance will diminish as sound traditions and better knowledge become more widely diffused.

The girl at puberty is usually less keenly and definitely conscious of her sexual nature than the boy.  But the risks she runs from sexual ignorance, though for the most part different, are more subtle and less easy to repair.  She is often extremely inquisitive concerning these matters; the thoughts of adolescent girls, and often their conversation among themselves, revolve much around sexual and allied mysteries.  Even in the matter of conscious sexual impulse the girl is often not so widely different from her brother, nor so much less likely to escape the contamination of evil communications, so that the scruples of foolish and ignorant persons who dread to “sully her purity” by proper instruction are exceedingly misplaced.