consider details, we must consider the elementary
bases of all matters connected with the education of children--namely,
morality and custom. These two words are connected by their inner
significance, and not merely by etymological meaning;[127] but they
represent different standards for passing judgment upon our actions.
Certain things conflict with established custom, without its being
permissible for us to speak of them as immoral. If at a social gathering
for which evening dress is the rule, a gentleman turns up in light
tweeds, he is guilty of a breach of custom, but not of an immoral
action. If an officer in the army, having impregnated a young girl of
the working class, marries her, his action is a moral one in the
positive sense, but in spite of this he commits an offence against the
customs of his class. Moreover, we have to remember that an act which is
immoral or opposed to custom at a certain time and among a certain
people, may at another time, or among another people, be neither the one
nor the other. In such matters, opinions change; and this applies also
to the case of actions connected with the sexual life. Herodotus relates
that in Babylon the virgins had, for a money payment, and in honour of
the Goddess of Love, to give themselves to a strange man; and similar
customs are reported of other peoples of antiquity.[128] In providing
for the sexual education of the child, we have to take into account such
changes of view; but we have also to consider the matter in relation to
the present condition of our civilisation, for the child is to be a
citizen of a real, not of an imaginary State.

Intimately related to custom and morality are certain psychical
processes, especially the sentiment of shame. This is aroused by actions
which are considered immoral by ourselves or by members of our
environment, and by actions which conflict with established custom. The
child detected in a lie is ashamed, either because the act is immoral,
or more often because the act is by others regarded as immoral; for the
opinion of others plays a great part in the causation of shame. The man
who has forgotten to put on his necktie, and in that condition appears
in public, is ashamed, because he has committed a breach of custom. This
dependence of the sense of shame upon morality and custom is true above
all in matters of sex. A girl who is undressing in a hotel room, and has
forgotten to bolt the door, so that a strange man suddenl