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should have to forbid the most beautiful works in our literature, and
also our folk-tales. Read, for example, Grimm's tales, and you will find
many passages which our morality-fanatics would reject as improper; for
instance, the story of the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, and many others,
telling of beauty, love, and kisses. The same remark applies to the
folk-songs. There are persons, indeed, who would like to edit such songs
and stories especially for the use of children. The case will be
remembered in which the song, _In einem kuehlen Grunde_, was so modified
for the use of children that they were told, not of the "beloved maiden"
who dwelt there, but of an "uncle" instead! Now, either the child that
hears this song for the first time has as yet no understanding of the
idea of love, and in that case there will be no danger in singing in its
original form this song whose full beauty will not until later become
manifest to the child; or else it has some understanding, and then the
replacement of the girl by an uncle will certainly do nothing to
safeguard the child's morality, but will merely corrupt its taste. The
assumption that by hearing such a song, the awakening of sexuality can
possibly be antedated, is almost ridiculous; and little or no proof has
been offered that anything of the sort ever occurs. One who in such a
song sees the least suspicion of immorality, and who thinks that the
hearing of it entails danger to a child, not only betrays the corruption
of his own taste, but lays himself open to the countercharge that his
own moral endowments are somewhat defective. Similar conditions apply to
the theatre, and to the other factors in the mental development of
children, and of human beings in general. It is quite impossible to
isolate children from every intimation of the erotic or the sexual. Let
us remember the wide diffusion of the newspapers of our day. We cannot
prevent children from reading newspapers; a statement that applies not
to large towns merely, but to small towns and to the country districts
as well. I speak here, not only of newspapers which are known to be
sensational, but of others as well. The more serious periodicals are
to-day often inclined to devote a good deal of space to many sexual
occurrences; they even err in transforming many non-sexual matters into
sexual ones, giving them a superfluous erotic background. They miss no
chance of converting an ordinary murder into a lust-murder; of
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