should be
biologically normal. It must be morally normal--normal, that is, to the
highest human interests.

The more concrete and detailed problems of method would not be serious if
every child's mind were a blank or even if its instincts were analogous to
normal animals. But neither is the case, and the problem of method and
means of instruction is therefore amazingly complicated. If the sex life
of a child were analogous to that of normal animals, it would not awaken
at all until puberty. And if the child's mind were a blank on sex matters,
it need only be kept from the invasion of wrong ideas from outside. But
the sex life of a child begins long before puberty,--both physically and
mentally. In the child, the physical signs are more or less detached from
the mental signs,--at this or that phase of a child's life, the one or the
other may have precedence; but the two are subtly interrelated, and tend
to contribute to each other. In the human being a sex life that is normal,
both biologically and morally, is an achievement; not a thing which would
take care of itself if the child were left alone and merely kept ignorant
of the abnormal. The human child is born abnormal,--that is to say, with
latent possibilities of sexual abnormality, physical and mental,--and this
by virtue of the mere fact that he is not only with animals a creature of
instinct, but with humanity a being with ideas.

This statement is doubtless oftener true of the sex life of boy children
than of girl children; but it is a fact and a very important fact, and it
lies at the bottom of the problem when we come to consider the details of
instructional method. If it were not for these facts, it would make no
difference who imparted sex information to the child, so the facts were
accurately told; and it would make no difference what facts were given, or
at what age the child received them, if no lies were conveyed. But because
the child's physical and mental sex life awakens early, and because every
child has latent tendencies to abnormality and latent responsiveness to
the abnormal, it is of critical importance that we decide who shall teach
the individual child, when the child shall be informed, and what the child
shall be told. It is of critical importance because, if the instruction
comes wrongly, we may, even with good intentions, contribute to the very
abnormality that we wish to forefend or overcome. With some children we
could perhaps safely take