exaggeration.

I have received hundreds of letters from boys and young men. These
confirm in _every_ way the conclusions set forth in this book, and
prove that the need for guidance in sex matters is acute and
universal. The relief and assistance which many boys have experienced
from correspondence with me, and the interest which I find in their
letters have caused me--spite of the extreme preoccupation of a
strenuous life--to issue a special invitation to those who may feel
inclined to write to me.

Great diversity of opinion exists as to the best method of giving sex
instruction, and those who have had experience of one method are
curiously blind to the merits of other methods, which they usually
strongly denounce. While I have my own views as to the best method to
adopt, I am quite sure that each one of very many methods can, in
suitable hands, produce great good, and that the very poorest method
is infinitely superior to no method at all.

Some are for oral teaching, some for the use of a pamphlet, some
favour confidential individual teaching, others collective public
teaching. Some would try to make sex a sacred subject; some would
prefer to keep the emotional element out and treat reproduction as a
matter-of-fact science subject. Some wish the parent to give the
teaching, some the teacher, some the doctor, some a lecturer specially
trained for this purpose. Good results have been obtained by every
one of these methods.

During recent years much additional evidence has accumulated in my
hands of the beneficent results of such teaching as I advocate in
these pages, and I am confident that of boys who have been wisely
guided and trained, few fail to lead clean lives even when associated
with those who are generally and openly corrupt. I must, however,
emphasise my belief that the cleanliness of a boy's life depends
ultimately not upon his knowledge of good and evil but upon his
devotion to the Right.

"Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control,
These three alone lead life to sovereign power."

Where these are not, it is idle to inculcate the rarest and most
difficult of all virtues.

F. ARTHUR SIBLY.

WYCLIFFE, STONEHOUSE, GLOS.
_September 1918._

INTRODUCTORY NOTE.

The term puberty will so often be used in the following chapters that
a brief account of the phenomena of puberty may appropriately be given
at the outset of this work. Puberty is a name given to the age at
which a boy