held in
check by the restraints which knowledge and teaching might have
furnished. This, however, has seemed a matter of no concern to the
guardians of youth. They have congratulated themselves if they could
pilot the youths, and especially the maidens, under their guardianship
into the haven of matrimony not only in apparent chastity, but in
ignorance of nearly everything that marriage signifies and involves,
alike for the individual and the coming race.

This policy has been so firmly established that the theory of it has
never been clearly argued out. So far as it exists at all, it is a
theory that walks on two feet pointing opposite ways: sex things must
not be talked about because they are "dirty"; sex things must not be
talked about because they are "sacred." We must leave sex things alone,
they say, because God will see to it that they manifest themselves
aright and work for good; we must leave sex things alone, they also say,
because there is no department in life in which the activity of the
Devil is so specially exhibited. The very same person may be guilty of
this contradiction, when varying circumstances render it convenient.
Such a confusion is, indeed, a fate liable to befall all ancient and
deeply rooted _tabus_; we see it in the _tabus_ against certain animals
as foods (as the Mosaic prohibition of pork); at first the animal was
too sacred to eat, but in time people came to think that it is too
disgusting to eat. They begin the practice for one reason, they continue
it for a totally opposed reason. Reasons are such a superficial part of
our lives!

Thus every movement of sexual hygiene necessarily clashes against an
established convention which is itself an inharmonious clash of
contradictory notions. This is especially the case if sexual hygiene is
introduced by way of the school. It is very widely held by many who
accept the arguments so ably set forth by Frau Maria Lischnewska, that
the school is not only the best way of introducing sexual hygiene, but
the only possible way, since through this channel alone is it possible
to employ an antidote to the evil influences of the home and the
world.[186] Yet to teach children what some of their parents consider as
too sacred to be taught, and others as too disgusting, and to begin this
teaching at an age when the children, having already imbibed these
parental notions, are old enough to be morbidly curious and prurient, is
to open the way to a complicated