ses. Such
a mother keeps herself fully acquainted with her child's sentiments. She
is in a position to choose the best moment for effecting the child's
sexual enlightenment, and she can best judge when the use of the stork
story is no longer justified. Of such a mother, a child far more readily
makes a confidant. Moreover, if the mother devotes a great deal of time
and pains to the personal care of her child, this has, in the case of a
boy, the great advantage of inculcating a greater respect for the female
sex in general than is apt to be found in boys to-day. I consider this
last-mentioned point to be one of the utmost importance in relation to
the sexual enlightenment, for only in such a way can the boy when grown
to manhood be led instinctively to refrain from the seduction of
girls--with all the misery which such a course usually involves for the
victims. Similarly, a young man brought up to respect women will refrain
from making a mock of pregnancy, whether "legitimate" or "illegitimate."
When we see a young woman bearing a new life in her womb, owing her
position it may be to all the subtle arts of the seducer, and note how
cruelly she is treated by the law and what scorn and contempt are poured
upon her by society and by the individual, we cannot fail to welcome
most heartily the movement for the Protection of Motherhood
(_Mutterschutzbewegung_) which has recently made such progress in
Germany. When children are properly educated, there is reason to hope
that sexual matters will be less often treated in an obscene spirit than
is the case to-day. Nor need we fear, when such education becomes the
rule, that every allusion to sexual things may involve dangers to the
child. Precisely because the sexual life will then be known to the child
in a natural way, will there be less reason to dread the deliberate
cultivation by children of sexual topics of conversation. When at school
the love adventures of Mars and Venus are the subject of the lesson, in
children thus educated no unclean thoughts need arise. It must never be
forgotten, however, that when the imagination has been perverted,
opportunities for unclean thoughts recur with extraordinary frequency;
and indeed by no means whatever can such opportunities be altogether
avoided. Since this is so, we must strengthen the child against the
dangers it will inevitably encounter, and must be careful not to pervert
its imagination by a false prudery.

Of course we must avo