As to method, let us deal with the boy as a creature with reason.  The best plan is to place before boys a standard of virile manhood, and then to show how such a standard may be met by clean living.  Real characters who have achieved high standards of vigor should be shown as heroes worthy of imitation.  Lincoln is known by most adolescent boys to have been a man of great physical strength.  He was “a man without vices, even in his youth, but full even in ripe age of the sap of virility."[53] The effect of clean living upon nations may also be spoken of.  Charles Kingsley writes of the Teuton:[54]—­

It was not the mere muscle of the Teuton which enabled him to crush the decrepit and debauched slave nations....  It had given him more, that purity of his:  it had given him, as it may give you, gentlemen, a calm and steady brain, and a free and loyal heart; the energy which comes from self-restraint; and the spirit which shrinks from neither God nor man, and feels it light to die for wife and child, for people and for Queen.

Because thousands of our boys are now growing into manhood who will never receive the advantages of such a plan as we hope will be worked out during the next decade,—­boys who are now at the danger point,—­an emergency exists that must be met in the best way possible.  For these boys, we are now forced to give single talks or short series of talks.  Just what facts should be mentioned in a talk to any particular group of boys is a matter which must always be governed by the age, development, and environment of the boys concerned.

The first task for a teacher or a speaker giving a single lesson or a series of lessons is to set up a high standard of manhood.  The lessons may concern the development and the conservation of virility.  The teacher may explain that virility means not only muscular strength but endurance, energy, will power, and courage; and that in addition to these, a true man has chivalry,—­he is concerned for the welfare of others, especially for the safety of women and children.  He must possess more than physical prowess; he must possess human virtues or he is no better than a brute.  The need for the conservation of virility in the race as well as in the individual should be explained.  Boys should see that the conservation of virility in men is of far more importance than the conservation of our water-power or our mines,—­that we owe a duty not only to ourselves, but to the nation and to the next generation.

A statement somewhat like the following can then be made:  “It is our duty to pass on to the next generation at least a little more vitality than we inherited from the past generation.  It is, therefore, important that we understand the main facts of reproduction, so that now we may live right and make no mistakes which may cause us to reproduce inferior children when we mature.”  The speaker may then describe the wonderful and beautiful process of reproduction in plants, and explain that human reproduction is a similar process.