LOCHES. At the same time these things cannot be taught to children at school.
DOCTOR. Why not, pray?
LOCHES. There are curiosities which it would be imprudent to arouse.
DOCTOR [hotly] So you think that by ignoring those curiosities you stifle them? Why, every boy and girl who who has been to a boarding school or through college knows you do not! So far from stifling them, you drive them to satisfy themselves in secret by any vile means they can. There is nothing immoral in the act that reproduces life by the means of love. But for the benefit of our children we organize round about it a gigantic conspiracy of silence. A respectable man will take his son and daughter to one of these grand music halls, where they will hear things of the most loathsome description; but he won’t let them hear a word spoken seriously on the subject of the great act of love. No, no! Not a word about that without blushing: only, as many barrack room jokes, as many of the foulest music hall suggestions as you like! Pornography, as much as you please: science, never! That is what we ought to change. The mystery and humbug in which physical facts are enveloped ought to be swept away and young men be given some pride in the creative power with which each one of us is endowed. They ought to be made to understand that the future of the race is in their hands and to be taught to transmit the great heritage they have received from their ancestors intact with all its possibilities to their descendants.
LOCHES. Ah, but we should go beyond that! I realize now that what is needed is to attack this evil at its source and to suppress prostitution. We ought to hound out these vile women who poison the very life of society.
DOCTOR. You forget that they themselves have first been poisoned. I am going to show you one of them. I warn you, not that it matters much, that she won’t express herself like a duchess. I can make her talk by playing on her vanity; she wants to be a ballet-dancer.
He opens the door and admits a pretty girl of some twenty years: she is very gay and cheerful.
DOCTOR. Getting on all right? [Without waiting for an answer] You still want to go on the stage, don’t you?
GIRL. Rather.
DOCTOR. Well, this gentleman’s a friend of the manager of the opera. He can give you a line to him, will that do?