At the outset of our attempt to educate the general public in matters of sex, we face certain factors which govern the scope, time, place, and method of any successful efforts.  Failure to give these factors due consideration has brought many attempts to early and unhappy ends, and convinced some people that ignorance is safer than such education.

We must reckon carefully with the centuries of social tradition which have resulted in the taboo on the subjects of sex and reproduction.  It may be that this conspiracy of silence has proved a failure; it may be that it has no basis worthy of intellectual respect.  It may be that all people should welcome the new freedom of speech.  These are not issues in the process of education.  Our first concern is the actual state of the public mind; we begin with that or else we fail.

Biologically the all-inclusive issue concerns the survival of the race.  Nature has no favorites:  the fittest of the human stock will survive after others have degenerated and disappeared; the fittest animals will ultimately people the earth.  Sexual degeneracy is the surest road to race extinction.

No aspects are more important than those concerning morals and religion.  The restraining influences of the fear of disease may and probably will be thrown off by science.  Whether education in scientific aspects of the subject will do good or harm in a given case depends on the extent to which moral and religious ideals control the conduct of the individual.  The inadequacy of mere knowledge in the realm of sex hygiene is painfully evident.  To the knowledge of what is right must be added the will to do the right.  As moral and religious instruction is the dominant educational need of the present generation, so the moral and religious aspects of sex problems transcend all others in importance.

These are the most important phases of the social emergency.  It is difficult to see them in all their intricate relationships and to realize that in any one approach we touch only one side of a many-sided problem.  The great majority of our people see only the superficial aspects, or see one particular phase in distorted perspective, because that is brought close to them through a special case of misfortune.  Even social workers are in danger of narrowness of vision because of devoted service in particular fields.  The aim of the following chapters is to consider successively and in right relationships various aspects of the social emergency.

CHAPTER III

PHYSIOLOGICAL ASPECTS

By William House

All instruction in the physiology of reproduction as an aid to sexual hygiene should be so conducted as to give assurance that the wonders of the origin and development of life in all its millions of forms be taught in a respectful, even reverent, spirit.  Naught in the universe is more marvelous than the beginnings of life.  Naught else compares with the wonders of growth and development.