e child, the youth
and maiden, the young man and woman, in order to enable them to deal
rightly, and so far as possible without injury either to themselves or
to others, with all those sexual events to which every one is naturally
liable. To fulfil his functions adequately the master in the art of
teaching sexual hygiene must answer to three requirements: (1) he must
have a sufficing knowledge of the facts of sexual psychology, sexual
physiology, and sexual pathology, knowledge which, in many important
respects, hardly existed at all until recently, and is only now
beginning to become generally accessible; (2) he must have a wise and
broad moral outlook, with a sane idealism which refrains from demanding
impossibilities, and resolutely thrusts aside not only the vulgar
platitudes of worldliness, but the equally mischievous platitudes of an
outworn and insincere asceticism, for the wise sexual hygienist knows,
with Pascal, that "he who tries to be an angel becomes a beast," and is
less anxious to make his pupils ineffective angels than effective men
and women, content to say with Browning, "I may put forth angels'
pinions, once unmanned, but not before"; (3) in addition to sound
knowledge and a wise moral outlook, the sexual hygienist must possess,
finally, a genuine sympathy with the young, an insight into their
sensitive shyness, a comprehension of their personal difficulties, and
the skill to speak to them simply, frankly, and humanly. If we ask
ourselves how many of the apostles of sexual hygiene combine these
three essential qualities, we shall probably not be able to name many,
while we may suspect that some do not even possess one of the three
qualifications. If we further consider that the work of sexual hygiene,
to be carried out on a really national scale, demands the more or less
active co-operation of parents, teachers, and doctors, and that parents,
teachers, and doctors are in these matters at present all alike
untrained, and usually prejudiced, we shall realize some of the dangers
through which sexual hygiene must at first pass.

It is, I hope, unnecessary for me to say that, in thus pointing out some
of the difficulties and the risks which must assail every attempt to
introduce an element of effective sexual hygiene into life, I am far
from wishing to argue that it is better to leave things as they are.
That is impossible, not only because we are realizing that our system of
incomplete silence is mischiev