en
Applied to Girls--The Mother the Natural and Best Teacher--The Morbid
Influence of Artificial Mystery in Sex Matters--Books on Sexual
Enlightenment of the Young--Nature of the Mother's Task--Sexual Education
in the School--The Value of Botany--Zooelogy--Sexual Education After
Puberty--The Necessity of Counteracting Quack Literature--Danger of
Neglecting to Prepare for the First Onset of Menstruation--The Right
Attitude Towards Woman's Sexual Life--The Vital Necessity of the Hygiene
of Menstruation During Adolescence--Such Hygiene Compatible with the
Educational and Social Equality of the Sexes--The Invalidism of Women
Mainly Due to Hygienic Neglect--Good Influence of Physical Training on
Women and Bad Influence of Athletics--The Evils of Emotional
Suppression--Need of Teaching the Dignity of Sex--Influence of These
Factors on a Woman's Fate in Marriage--Lectures and Addresses on Sexual
Hygiene--The Doctor's Part in Sexual Education--Pubertal Initiation Into
the Ideal World--The Place of the Religious and Ethical Teacher--The
Initiation Rites of Savages Into Manhood and Womanhood--The Sexual
Influence of Literature--The Sexual Influence of Art.

It may seem to some that in attaching weight to the ancestry, the
parentage, the conception, the gestation, even the first infancy, of the
child we are wandering away from the sphere of the psychology of sex. That
is far from being the case. We are, on the contrary, going to the root of
sex. All our growing knowledge tends to show that, equally with his
physical nature, the child's psychic nature is based on breed and nurture,
on the quality of the stocks he belongs to, and on the care taken at the
early moments when care counts for most, to preserve the fine quality of
those stocks.

It must, of course, be remembered that the influences of both
breed and nurture are alike influential on the fate of the
individual. The influence of nurture is so obvious that few are
likely to under-rate it. The influence of breed, however, is less
obvious, and we may still meet with persons so ill informed, and
perhaps so prejudiced, as to deny it altogether. The growth of
our knowledge in this matter, by showing how subtle and
penetrative is the influence of heredity, cannot fail to dispel
this mischievous notion. No sound civilization is possible except
in a community which in the mass is not only well-nurtured but
well-bred. And in no part of