ts of the social
emergency.

CHAPTER III

PHYSIOLOGICAL ASPECTS

_By William House_

All instruction in the physiology of reproduction as an aid to sexual
hygiene should be so conducted as to give assurance that the wonders of
the origin and development of life in all its millions of forms be taught
in a respectful, even reverent, spirit. Naught in the universe is more
marvelous than the beginnings of life. Naught else compares with the
wonders of growth and development.

Rightly taught, reproduction may be cleansed from the foul interpretations
which have soiled the minds of countless children, and may be made into a
body of wonderful and sacred truths capable of fortifying youthful minds
against the uncleanness and indecencies which have contributed so largely
to sexual impurity. If it be never forgotten that human ingenuity has been
taxed in untold numbers of unsuccessful experiments to produce life by
other than nature's methods, while the power of reproduction resides in
even the lowliest of living organisms, the mystery and marvel are
multiplied a hundredfold, and the subject of reproduction is invested with
a halo of splendid and inspiring proportions.

* * * * *

The sex organs are the agencies by which every plant and every animal,
each after its kind, brings into the world a succeeding generation. Sex
activity is the result of sex impulse. The imperative need of reproduction
in the scheme of nature is responsible for the presence of sex impulse as
it occurs in every normal adult animal. Were it not for this impulse the
earth would soon become void of life. The human sex impulse is a powerful
one, thought compelling, at times well-nigh overmastering. Though in the
main good, it sometimes produces harmful results. Among the lower animals
the sex function is exercised without thought or knowledge of consequence,
restrained only by the limitations of physical power,--the power to obtain
by might, by conquest. In fully developed mankind, the mind acts as a
constraining force which may control or even completely subdue physical
manifestations of sex impulse.

In adolescents--those who are approaching _maturity_, but are in a
transition state, neither man nor child--sex desire may be as strong as in
those of riper years. Many who are passing through this period know little
or nothing of the forces that pulse through their frames and seem to
consume them with unquenchab