being shamed by the superior knowledge of an uneducated child
from the country. On one occasion, I even saw a married woman, actually
twenty-eight years of age, who had been examined by a gynecologist, and
for whom the latter had recommended the operative division of the hymen;
but the lady confused this operation with oophorectomy, and it was by no
means an easy matter to make her understand the difference between the
two. It will readily be understood that every grown man and woman ought
ultimately to be fully informed concerning all such matters. In part,
such instruction will take place at school, and more especially in the
case of processes in the vegetable and lower animal world; these things
will be explained in connexion with instruction in natural history and
biology. But information about the human reproductive organs cannot be
given in the school, unless to children of a considerable age; for these
matters, direct personal instruction at home is more suitable.

Apart from the demands of general culture there are other reasons why
sexual enlightenment is desirable. These chiefly concern the subjective
aspects of the sexual life, whilst the objective processes serve
principally for preparatory instruction.

First of all, grounds of health have to be considered. It may be
desirable to enlighten the child regarding the dangers of masturbation,
those of ordinary illegitimate sexual intercourse, and those of sexual
excesses. No detailed discussion of these points is here necessary,
since they have been dealt with before at considerable length,
especially on p. 180 _et seq._ Here I will merely point out that this
aspect of enlightenment affects the entire future of the child and the
family it will one day have. The first consideration here is the danger
of venereal infection, and it is this danger, in close association with
the other prophylactic efforts of our time, which has given rise to the
recent movement in favour of sexual enlightenment. In this connexion the
dangers may be explained that threaten the male from gonorrhoeal
infection, not only in his own person, but also in the persons of his
future wife and children. The wife may be infected by the husband, and
the visual powers of the new-born child may also be endangered.
Ophthalmia of the new-born, which often leads to blindness, commonly
depends upon conjunctival infection received during the act of
parturition. Syphilis was referred to on p. 192. Here it