them."[190] We cannot too often
meditate on these wise words.

It is useless to attempt to introduce sexual hygiene as a subject apart,
and in some respects it may be dangerous. When we touch sex we are
touching sensitive fibres which thrill through the whole of our social
organism, just as the touch of love thrills through the whole of the
bodily organism. Any vital reform here, any true introduction of sexual
hygiene to replace our traditional policy of confused silence, affects
the whole of life or it affects nothing. It will modify our social
conventions, enter our family life, transform our moral outlook, perhaps
re-inspire our religion and our philosophy.

That conclusion need by no means render us pessimistic concerning the
future of sexual hygiene, nor unduly anxious to cling to the policy of
the past. But it may induce us to be content to move slowly, to prepare
our movements widely and firmly, and not to expect too much at the
outset. By introducing sexual hygiene we are breaking with the tradition
of the past which professed to leave the process by which the race is
carried on to Nature, to God, especially to the devil. We are claiming
that it is a matter for individual personal responsibility, deliberately
exercised in the light of precise knowledge which every young man and
woman has a right, or rather a duty, to possess. That conception of
personal responsibility thus extended to the sphere of sex in the
reproduction of the race may well transform life and alter the course of
civilization. It is not merely a reform in the class-room, it is a
reform in the home, in the church, in the law courts, in the
legislature. If sexual hygiene means that, it means something great,
though something which can only come slowly, with difficulty, with much
searching of hearts. If, on the other hand, sexual hygiene means nothing
but the introduction of a new formal catechism, and an occasional
goody-goody perfunctory exhortation, it may be introduced at once, quite
easily, without hurting anyone's feelings. But, really, it will not be
worth worrying about, one way or the other.

FOOTNOTES:

[181] For a full discussion of the movement, see Havelock Ellis, _Studies
in the Psychology of Sex_, Vol. VI, "Sex in Relation to Society," chaps.
II and III.

[182] Basedow (born at Hamburg 1723, died 1790) set forth his views on
sexual education--which will seem to many somewhat radical and advanced
even to-day--in his great tre