e young scoundrel might have
seven years in which to learn to keep his clothes on.

Theodore Roosevelt, who is at once the greatest President and the wisest
man of whom we have any record, tells us that we must breed more
children. But how shall our women bear more children, or presently bear
any, if they are to be continually made more and more unfit for
motherhood by the pitfalls into which their ignorance of the science of
life leads them? Because of the Comstockery which has its felt grip upon
our throats we may not instruct the little child in the way of health;
or if it be said that there is nothing to prevent the parent from
instructing the child, yet it must be insisted that the parent has no
means of knowing since Comstockery prescribes ignorance as the only way
to innocence; and innocent our girls must be at any cost. Besides, the
average mother, if she will but admit the truth, is ashamed to talk with
her daughter about Comstockery things. We all know that this is so. Our
parents treated us in such fashion, and we are so treating our children.

The knowledge which each generation acquires at the cost of health, yes,
at the cost of life even, dies with it, for the most part. The one thing
we most need to know is how to live; the science of life begins with
sex, goes on with sex, ends with sex; but sex we may not discuss; thus
we go on in ignorance of life. Shall it remain so? Is Comstockery to be
our best expression of the most vital matter of existence? Life, sex,
should be and is when we recognize it, the purest, sweetest, simplest
subject of discussion; and we make of it a filthy jest. We will not tell
our sons the things we have learned through bitter experience, because
we cannot bear the shame of discussing sex subjects with them, because
of the accursed Comstockery that is within us; but we will go to the
club and the bar room, or anywhere behind locked doors in the select
company of our fellows, and there pour out the real essence of our
Comstockery in stories which make a filthy jest of sex. Every man knows
this is the truth. Perhaps women, in their Comstockery, know it too. As
has been already said, treat digestion as sex is treated, and it will be
sniggered over behind locked doors in precisely the same way.

Let us rid ourselves of the fatal, prurient restrictions on sex
discussion and in a marvellously short time we shall have a store of
sweet knowledge on the subject that will enable us to live