dy, incoherent, formless feelings and
purposes are concentrated, directed, and fixed in devotion to a young
woman whom he idealizes, almost deifies. That is the first stage in the
natural directing and forming of sex powers and impulses toward social,
moral, and religious ends. Of course the young man may discover, after a
while, that the first object of his fancy is not so angelic as he thought.
By and by his fancy changes and may rove to several other maidens before
he reaches maturity; but each successive experience, if he is true to his
better self, concentrates his affections and directs them, until, if he is
fortunate, in the course of time he finds his true mate and enters upon
marriage. He is now fairly equipped for what most of us know to be a long
course in the discipline of the selfish, the personal, the more or less
brute desires and ambitions of man. Here he learns to subject himself,
his own comfort, his own ends, his own ambitions, to the good of his wife
and her happiness, to the good of his children and the satisfaction of
their needs. Then, more and more, after having concentrated the powers of
his spirit through faithful courtship and through happy marriage and
fatherhood, the man is able to diffuse these same energies through many
channels, for the protection of all sorts and conditions of women and
children. The man is now a citizen, a member of society, with developed
powers of social sympathy, of social energy. How has he developed these
powers? Not by any supposition that the early sex instincts he felt in his
boyhood were wholly animal and must be atrophied by disuse, but by
gathering and directing them into the right channels. Direction, like
control, depends upon enlightened, purposeful, persistent love.

In the third place, we may consider how, in matters of sex, the flesh and
the soul may grow together in mutual help. The essential facts and the
vital importance of the sex life appeal to the developing boy or girl in
four great relations, in relation to father and mother, in relation to
the strength and grace of his or her own body and mind, in relation to his
or her future family, and in relation to society in general. These appeals
come in successive periods and open the way to healthful instruction and
guidance from childhood up to manhood and womanhood.

Sex questions first arise in the child's mind in connection with
parenthood. The first thing a little boy or girl needs to know is that