her own presence of mind.  Hirschfeld records the case of an innocent young girl of seventeen—­in this case, it eventually proved, an invert—­who was persuaded to marry but on discovering what marriage meant energetically resisted her husband’s sexual approaches.  He appealed to her mother to explain to her daughter the nature of “wifely duties.”  But the young wife replied to her mother’s expostulations, “If that is my wifely duty then it was your parental duty to have told me beforehand, for, if I had known, I should never have married.”  The husband in this case, much in love with his wife, sought for eight years to over-persuade her, but in vain, and a separation finally took place.[36] That, no doubt, is an extreme case, but how many innocent young inverted girls never realize their true nature until after marriage, and how many perfectly normal girls are so shocked by the too sudden initiation of marriage that their beautiful early dreams of love never develop slowly and wholesomely into the acceptance of its still more beautiful realities?

Before the age of puberty it would seem that the sexual initiation of the child—­apart from such scientific information as would form part of school courses in botany and zooelogy—­should be the exclusive privilege of the mother, or whomever it may be to whom the mother’s duties are delegated.  At puberty more authoritative and precise advice is desirable than the mother may be able or willing to give.  It is at this age that she should put into her son’s or daughter’s hands some one or other of the very numerous manuals to which reference has already been made (page 53), expounding the physical and moral aspects of the sexual life and the principles of sexual hygiene.  The boy or girl is already, we may take it, acquainted with the facts of motherhood, and the origin of babies, as well as, more or less precisely, with the father’s part in their procreation.  Whatever manual is now placed in his or her hands should at least deal summarily, but definitely, with the sexual relationship, and should also comment, warningly but in no alarmist spirit, with the chief auto-erotic phenomena, and by no means exclusively with masturbation.  Nothing but good can come of the use of such a manual, if it has been wisely selected; it will supplant what the mother has already done, what the teacher may still be doing, and what later may be done by private interview with a doctor.  It has indeed been argued that the boy or girl to whom such literature is presented will merely make it an opportunity for morbid revelry and sensual enjoyment.  It can well be believed that this may sometimes happen with boys or girls from whom all sexual facts have always been mysteriously veiled, and that when at last they find the opportunity of gratifying their long-repressed and perfectly natural curiosity they are overcome by the excitement of the event.  It could not happen to children who have been naturally and wholesomely brought up.  At a later age, during adolescence, there is doubtless great advantage in the plan, now frequently adopted, especially in Germany, of giving lectures, addresses, or quiet talks to young people of each sex separately.  The speaker is usually a specially selected teacher, a doctor or other qualified person who may be brought in for this special purpose.