Hygiene and conduct.
(1) "The straight, right action in matters of human affection has nothing to do with hygiene. For hygiene has no words to proclaim as to why you and I should behave ourselves. Hygiene has the right and the duty to make clear the perverted and the diseased consequences of certain errors. But these consequences are far from constant.... Let us disabuse our minds, then, of the idea that there are always bad physical consequences of mistake, error, or sin in this [sex] field, and that those consequences are reasons for behaving ourselves. But even if there were such consequences, I think it even more mischievous for us to preach a morality based upon them."
That hygienic knowledge makes many people control their sexual selves is beyond dispute. Because the consequences of sexual error are far from constant is a weak argument against pointing out possible results. The consequences from pistols are far from constant, and yet I have no doubt that Dr. Cabot would teach small boys the danger of shooting themselves and other people.
Hygiene and ethics for health.
The last quoted sentence suggests Dr. Cabot's whole basis of contention against sex-hygiene. He seems to have inferred from the earlier papers, especially those by Dr. Morrow, that the hygiene of sex is to be taught as an approach to morality. On the contrary, the truth is that the aim of most of the first leaders in sex-instruction was to teach hygiene and ethics primarily in order to improve health. Dr. Morrow and others believed that hygienic teaching would secondarily react on sexual morality; but the original aim of the Society of Sanitary and Moral Prophylaxis was to limit the spread of venereal disease by sanitary, moral, and legal means. In other words, moral appeals were to aid in checking disease, and knowledge of disease was not claimed to improve morality, although such knowledge might react against immorality. It is this misunderstanding or overlooking of the real reasons for teaching concerning sex health that seems to have led Dr. Cabot into apparent opposition to the general movement for sex-instruction. One infers from all his lectures that he believes it good to teach hygiene for health, ethics for morality, and biology for science; but that these should not be correlated because to him they are unrelated. It seems to me that he has simply been misled by the overenthusiasm of some of the first writers on sex-hygiene and by the widespread use of that limited term instead of sex-education.
Is sex-hygiene immoral?
(2) "Now I say that the preaching about sex-hygiene that is going on in recent books and in the periodical press is immoral in its tendency. It is like saying, 'Don't lie, for if you do, you won't sleep at night, and insomnia is bad for the health.'"
If insomnia often follows lying, then it should be taught as one reason why falsehoods should be avoided. This is not opposed to ethical teaching, for at the same time we can teach the other reasons for not telling lies. Likewise, sex-hygiene offers certain reasons for conduct and may be supplemented by sex-ethics.
Information and morality.
(3) "The attempts to consecrate affection and to safeguard morality by teaching in public or private schools what is called 'sex-hygiene' will, I believe, prove a failure. I have very little confidence in the restraining or inspiring value of information, as such. I have seen too much of its powerlessness in medical men and students. No one knows so much of the harm of morphine as the physicians do, yet there are more cases of morphine habit among physicians than among any less informed profession. It is, of course, easy to make young children familiar with the facts of maternity and birth. Compared to the ordinary methods of concealment and lying by parents to children about these matters this is doubtless an improvement, but it does almost nothing to meet the moral problems of sex which come up later in the child's life. One may know all about maternity, without knowing anything of the difficulties and dangers of sex. Many have thought that by thorough teaching of the physiology of reproduction in plants and animals we can anticipate and to a considerable extent prevent the dangers and temptations referred to above."