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.
[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 treatise Elementarwerk (1774). His practical educational work is dealt with by Pinloche, La Réforme de l'Education en Allemagne au Dix-huitième Siècle.
[183] The best of these papers have been printed in a volume entitled Am Lebensquell.
[841] The elaborate and admirable initiation of boys among the natives of Torres Straits furnishes a good example of this education, and has been fully described by Dr. A.C. Haddon, Reports of the Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits, Vol. V, chaps. VII and XII.
[185] Moll in his wise and comprehensive work, The Sexual Life of the Child (German ed., p. 225), lays it down emphatically that "we must clearly realize at the outset that the complete exclusion of sexual stimuli in the education of children is impossible." He adds that the demands made by some "fanatics of hygiene" would be dangerous even if they were practicable. Games and physical exercises induce in many cases a considerable degree of sexual stimulation. But this need not cause us undue alarm, nor must we thereby be persuaded to change our policy of recommending such games and exercises.
[186] See Frau Maria Lischnewska's excellent pamphlet, Geschlechtliche Belehrung der Kinder, first published in Mutterschutz, 1905, Heft 4 and 5. This is perhaps the ablest statement of the argument in favour of giving the chief place in sexual hygiene to the teacher. Frau Lischnewska recognizes three factors in the movement for freeing the sexual activities from degradation: (1) medical, (2) economic, and (3) rational. But it is the last—in the broadest sense as a comprehensive process of enlightenment—which she regards as the chief. "The views and sentiments of people must be changed," she says. "The civilized man must learn to gaze at this piece of Nature with pure eyes; reverence towards it must early sink into his soul. In the absence of this fundamental renovation, medical and social measures will merely produce refined animals."
[187] "We parents of to-day," as Henriette Fürth truly says ("Erotik und Elternpflicht," Am Lebensquell, p. 11), "have not yet attained that beautiful naturalness out of which in these matters simplicity and freedom grow. And however willing we may be to learn afresh, most of us have so far lost our inward freedom from prejudice—the standpoint of the pure to whom all things are pure—that we cannot acquire it again. We parents of to-day have been altogether wrongly brought up. The inoculated feeling of shame still remains even after we have recognized that shame in this connection is false."
[188] The method of imparting a knowledge of sexual hygiene (especially in relation to venereal diseases) at the outset of adult life has most actively been carried out in Germany and the United States. In Germany lectures by doctors to students and others on these matters are frequently given. In the United States information and advice are spread abroad chiefly by the aid of societies. The American Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis, with which the name of Dr. Morrow is specially connected, was organized in 1905. The Chicago Society of Social Hygiene was established in 1906. Since then many other similar societies have sprung up under medical auspices in various American cities and states.