To render us safe we should not only have more carefully drawn laws and more rigid selection at our ports of entry, but we should if possible also know the stock from which our future citizens come. This is peculiarly desirable for such defects as feeble-mindedness and various other mental imperfections, some of which require prolonged observation for detection. Davenport estimates that it is wholly within the realm of possibility and good business sense to maintain a corps of trained inspectors abroad in the chief centers from which our immigrants come who shall certify the desirable applicants. He makes the point that the national expense would be far less than the cost of maintaining the army of defectives we are now admitting to our own country, many of whom almost immediately become public charges, to say nothing of the hordes of carriers who though normal themselves, will transmit undesirable traits.
Sexual Vice.—As to sexual vice, the skein is indeed a tangled one. Since nine-tenths of the difficulty centers in a lack of self-restraint, and inasmuch as the mating instinct is one of the strongest that tugs at the flesh of humanity, it is obvious that those by nature deficient in volitional control will almost without exception give way to the call. So as might be expected the hordes of our feeble-minded and epileptic are always a source of grave danger in this respect. However, the mentally enfeebled are by no means the only offenders; indeed, they are probably not the majority. The true situation is finally dawning on society and the reformer’s call for instruction in “sex-hygiene” resounds through the land. The whole matter is one of the most perplexing and momentous that confronts us to-day.
The Question of School Instruction in Sex-Hygiene.—While the writer does not for an instant underestimate the gravity of the situation, and has only contempt for the nonsense that is palmed off on children about their origin, or the indelicate self-consciousness which puts under the ban the discussion of so serious a problem by adults, still he is not convinced that the universal teaching of the subject to children in schools by the average teacher, as advocated by some, is to be the solution of the matter or is even a wise attempt at solution. Yet he freely admits that he is possibly overfearful of the effects of the undesirable features of such instruction. True it is that all children do learn, frequently at an astonishingly early age, about sex, and their knowledge is usually of an undesirable kind from unreliable and often vicious sources, and it is equally true that parents, either through ignorance or prudery, generally can not be depended on to give the child necessary instruction. But before entering on a wide-spread campaign of undiluted sex-instruction in schools might it not be more prudent to make an attempt toward reaching fathers and mothers and convincing them of the necessity of dealing more frankly and intelligently with their children regarding sex?
Even to the novice in psychology the powerful nature of suggestion is known, and with this knowledge before us, is it not wiser to strive in the main to keep the child’s mind off of sex rather than specifically to focus it on it by special convocations and discourse? If our psychology means anything, then the worst possible thing we can do for a child is to make him unduly sex-conscious. Something might be done profitably perhaps in schools in an unobtrusive way by specially gifted persons, but the self-conscious way in which most teachers go about topics of sex is certainly not reassuring to the thoughtful observer as regards the benefit derived from such instruction. The one evident method of accomplishing wholesome sex-instruction in schools, devoid of all possibility of undesirable suggestion and sex-consciousness, is in the form of biological work where plants and animals are studied in all their relations, the subject of propagation being taken up in as matter-of-fact a way as the functioning of any other organ system of plants or animals. In such a course, long before the subject of sex in higher animals need be approached the pupil will have developed an attitude of mind which will lead him to see nothing unusual or suggestive in the function of sex no matter where it may be found. Incidentally, inasmuch as the manner in which germs affect living organisms should be studied in such a course anyway, it would be a simple matter to give all necessary information about the dangers of infection from venereal diseases.
Mere Knowledge Not the Crux of the Sex Problem.—However, desirable as correct knowledge about sex is, knowledge alone is not the crux of the sex problem. The moral dangers and abuses that we are trying to circumvent lie rather in the realm of the emotions than that of the intellect. The problem must be solved from a broader foundation than mere information. The all-important consideration is the early establishment of general habits of self-control so that these may become incorporated in the nervous organization of the child and become inhibitory anchors against passions and temptation. Children must be taught to suppress the present impulse, to sacrifice the immediate pleasure for the more distant or permanent good. They must be practised in calling up feelings that will counteract other promptings which if followed blindly are inimical to social welfare. Their control must come from within not as a matter of external compulsion. That way character lies.
So in viewing the problem of sexual hygiene the writer feels that our attempts toward damming the torrents in the adolescent by a belated effort at verbal instruction on sex-hygiene is at best only a palliative or an attempt to cure the symptoms of a more deeply-seated, organic, social malady. The treatment should have been in progress long before in the form of training in self-control, and in the inculcation of the sense of dignity and self-respect which springs from the individual’s consciousness of being, not a slave to his desires, but his own master. This, together with the judicious schooling of boys in a greater chivalry and respect for womanhood, and of girls in the necessity of meriting such esteem, will, in my estimation, carry us further than formal courses in sex-hygiene.
Early Training in Self-Restraint an Important Preventive of Crime and Delinquency.—As to crime and delinquency in general, it is evident that the same early training in self-restraint is a most important factor of prevention. A wise warden in charge of a large prison says, “Most of these men are here because they have not learned sufficiently the lesson of self-control.” This is the age of preventive medicine, why not also of preventive crime and delinquency? Instead of confining our practise to punishing offenders, necessary as this may be under the present conditions, why not strive more to prevent the commission of offenses? As far as normal individuals are concerned much can be done by early cultivation in self-discipline and through the establishment of moral backbone by training in the overcoming of difficulties. Much, very much, also remains to be done in the correction of wrong social conditions.
Unpardonable to Permit Delinquent Defectives to Multiply Their Kind.—As for our mental defectives and moral imbeciles, knowing now how strongly hereditary the underlying factors of these conditions are, and with no preventive or curative agents in sight, to let them produce progeny, is clearly unpardonable.