introduction for the young mind to the questions of sex. But even

its frank acceptance, as of divine origin, of sexual rules so unlike those that are nominally our own, such as polygamy and concubinage, helps to enlarge the vision of the youthful mind by showing that the rules surrounding the child are not those everywhere and always valid, while the nakedness and realism of the Bible cannot but be a wholesome and tonic corrective to conventional pruderies. We must, indeed, always protest against the absurd confusion whereby nakedness of speech is regarded as equivalent to immorality, and not the less because it is often adopted even in what are regarded as intellectual quarters. When in the House of Lords, in the last century, the question of the exclusion of Byron's statue from Westminster Abbey was under discussion, Lord Brougham "denied that Shakespeare was more moral than Byron. He could, on the contrary, point out in a single page of Shakespeare more grossness than was to be found in all Lord Byron's works." The conclusion Brougham thus reached, that Byron is an incomparably more moral writer than Shakespeare, ought to have been a sufficient _reductio ad absurdum_ of his argument, but it does not appear that anyone pointed out the vulgar confusion into which he had fallen. It may be said that the special attractiveness which the nakedness of great literature sometimes possesses for young minds is unwholesome. But it must be remembered that the peculiar interest of this element is merely due to the fact that elsewhere there is an inveterate and abnormal concealment. It must also be said that the statements of the great writers about natural things are never degrading, nor even erotically exciting to the young, and what Emilia Pardo Bazan tells of herself and her delight when a child in the historical books of the Old Testament, that the crude passages in them failed to send the faintest cloud of trouble across her young imagination, is equally true of most children. It is necessary, indeed, that these naked and serious things should be left standing, even if only to counterbalance the lewdly comic efforts to besmirch love and sex, which are visible to all in every low-class bookseller's shop window. This point of view was vigorously championed by the speakers on sexual education at the Third Congress of the German Gesellschaft zur Bekämpfung der Geschlechtskrankheiten in 1907. Thus Enderlin, speaking as a headmaster, protested against the custom of bowdlerizing poems and folk-songs for the use of children, and thus robbing them of the finest introduction to purified sexual impulses and the highest sphere of emotion, while at the same time they are recklessly exposed to the "psychic infection" of the vulgar comic papers everywhere exposed for sale. "So long as children are too young to respond to erotic poetry it cannot hurt them; when they are old enough to respond it can only benefit them by opening to them the highest and purest channels of human emotion" (_Sexualpädagogik_, p. 60). Professor Schäfenacker (id., p. 98) expresses himself in the same sense, and remarks that "the method of removing from school-books all those passages which, in the opinion of short-sighted and narrow-hearted schoolmasters, are unsuited for youth, must be decisively condemned." Every healthy boy and girl who has reached the age of puberty may be safely allowed to ramble in any good library, however varied its contents. So far from needing guidance they will usually show a much more refined taste than their elders. At this age, when the emotions are still virginal and sensitive, the things that are realistic, ugly, or morbid, jar on the young spirit and are cast aside, though in adult life, with the coarsening of mental texture which comes of years and experience, this repugnance, doubtless by an equally sound and natural instinct, may become much less acute. Ellen Key in Ch. VI of her _Century of the Child_ well summarizes the reasons against the practice of selecting for children books that are "suitable" for them, a practice which she considers one of the follies of modern education. The child should be free to read all great literature, and will himself instinctively put aside the things he is not yet ripe for. His cooler senses are undisturbed by scenes that his elders find too exciting, while even at a later stage it is not the nakedness of great literature, but much more the method of the modern novel, which is likely to stain the imagination, falsify reality and injure taste. It is concealment which misleads and coarsens, producing a state of mind in which even the Bible becomes a stimulus to the senses. The writings of the great masters yield the imaginative food which the child craves, and the erotic moment in them is too brief to be overheating. It is the more necessary, Ellen Key remarks, for children to be introduced to great literature, since they often have little opportunity to occupy themselves with it in later life. Many years earlier Ruskin, in _Sesame and Lilies_, had eloquently urged that even young girls should be allowed to range freely in libraries. What has been said about literature applies equally to art. Art, as well as literature, and in the same indirect way, can be made a valuable aid in the task of sexual enlightenment and sexual hygiene. Modern art may, indeed, for the most part, be ignored from this point of view, but children cannot be too early familiarized with the representations of the nude in ancient sculpture and in the paintings of the old masters of the Italian school. In this way they may be immunized, as Enderlin expresses it, against those representations of the nude which make an appeal to the baser instincts. Early familiarity with nudity in art is at the same time an aid to the attainment of a proper attitude towards purity in nature. "He who has once learnt," as Höller remarks, "to enjoy peacefully nakedness in art, will be able to look on nakedness in nature as on a work of art." Casts of classic nude statues and reproductions of the pictures of the old Venetian and other Italian masters may fittingly be used to adorn schoolrooms, not so much as objects of instruction as things of beauty with which the child cannot too early become familiarized. In Italy it is said to be usual for school classes to be taken by their teachers to the art museums with good results; such visits form part of the official scheme of education. There can be no doubt that such early familiarity with the beauty of nudity in classic art is widely needed among all social classes and in many countries. It is to this defect of our education that we must attribute the occasional, and indeed in America and England frequent, occurrence of such incidents as petitions and protests against the exhibition of nude statuary in art museums, the display of pictures so inoffensive as Leighton's "Bath of Psyche" in shop windows, and the demand for the draping of the naked personifications of abstract virtues in architectural street decoration. So imperfect is still the education of the multitude that in these matters the ill-bred fanatic of pruriency usually gains his will. Such a state of things cannot but have an unwholesome reaction on the moral atmosphere of the community in which it is possible. Even from the religious point of view, prurient prudery is not justifiable. Northcote has very temperately and sensibly discussed the question of the nude in art from the standpoint of Christian morality. He points out that not only is the nude in art not to be condemned without qualification, and that the nude is by no means necessarily the erotic, but he also adds that even erotic art, in its best and purest manifestations, only arouses emotions that are the legitimate object of man's aspirations. It would be impossible even to represent Biblical stories adequately on canvas or in marble if erotic art were to be tabooed (Rev. H. Northcote, _Christianity and Sex Problems_, Ch. XIV). Early familiarity with the nude in classic and early Italian art should be combined at puberty with an equal familiarity with photographs of beautiful and naturally developed nude models. In former years books containing such pictures in a suitable and attractive manner to place before the young were difficult to procure. Now this difficulty no longer exists. Dr. C.H. Stratz, of The Hague, has been the pioneer in this matter, and in a series of beautiful books (notably in _Der Körper des Kindes, Die Schönheit des Weiblichen Körpers_ and _Die Rassenschönheit des Weibes_, all published by Enke in Stuttgart), he has brought together a large number of admirably selected photographs of nude but entirely chaste figures. More recently Dr. Shufeldt, of Washington (who dedicates his work to Stratz), has published his _Studies of the Human Form_ in which, in the same spirit, he has brought together the results of his own studies of the naked human form during many years. It is necessary to correct the impressions received from classic sources by good photographic illustrations on account of the false conventions prevailing in classic works, though those conventions were not necessarily false for the artists who originated them. The omission of the pudendal hair, in representations of the nude was, for instance, quite natural for the people of countries still under Oriental influence are accustomed to remove the hair from the body. If, however, under quite different conditions, we perpetuate that artistic convention to-day, we put ourselves into a perverse relation to nature. There is ample evidence of this. "There is one convention so ancient, so necessary, so universal," writes Mr. Frederic Harrison (_Nineteenth Century and After_, Aug., 1907), "that its deliberate defiance to-day may arouse the bile of the least squeamish of men and should make women withdraw at once." If boys and girls were brought up at their mother's knees in familiarity with pictures of beautiful and natural nakedness, it would be impossible for anyone to write such silly and shameful words as these. There can be no doubt that among ourselves the simple and direct attitude of the child towards nakedness is so early crushed out of him that intelligent education is necessary in order that he may be enabled to discern what is and what is not obscene. To the plough-boy and the country servant-girl all nakedness, including that of Greek statuary, is alike shameful or lustful. "I have a picture of women like that," said a countryman with a grin, as he pointed to a photograph of one of Tintoret's most beautiful groups, "smoking cigarettes." And the mass of people in most northern countries have still passed little beyond this stage of discernment; in ability to distinguish between the beautiful and the obscene they are still on the level of the plough-boy and the servant-girl. FOOTNOTES: [18] These manifestations have been dealt with in the study of Autoerotism in vol. i of the present _Studies_. It may be added that the sexual life of the child has been exhaustively investigated by Moll, _Das Sexualleben des Kindes_, 1909. [19] This genital efflorescence in the sexual glands and breasts at birth or in early infancy has been discussed in a Paris thesis, by Camille Renouf (_La Crise Génital et les Manifestations Connexes chez le Foetus et le Nouveau-né_, 1905); he is unable to offer a satisfactory explanation of these phenomena. [20] Amélineau, _La Morale des Egyptiens_, p. 64. [21] "The Social Evil in Philadelphia," _Arena_, March, 1896. [22] Moll, _Konträre Sexualempfindung_, third edition, p. 592. [23] This powerlessness of the law and the police is well recognized by lawyers familiar with the matter. Thus F. Werthauer (_Sittlichkeitsdelikte der Grosstadt_, 1907) insists throughout on the importance of parents and teachers imparting to children from their early years a progressively increasing knowledge of sexual matters. [24] "Parents must be taught how to impart information," remarks E.L. Keyes ("Education upon Sexual Matters," _New York Medical Journal_, Feb. 10, 1906), "and this teaching of the parent should begin when he is himself a child." [25] Moll (op. cit., p. 224) argues well how impossible it is to preserve children from sights and influence connected with the sexual life. [26] Girls are not even prepared, in many cases, for the appearance of the pubic hair. This unexpected growth of hair frequently causes young girls much secret worry, and often they carefully cut it off. [27] G.S. Hall, _Adolescence_, vol. i, p. 511. Many years ago, in 1875, the late Dr. Clarke, in his _Sex in Education_, advised menstrual rest for girls, and thereby aroused a violent opposition which would certainly not be found nowadays, when the special risks of womanhood are becoming more clearly understood. [28] For a summary of the physical and mental phenomena of the menstrual period, see Havelock Ellis: _Man and Woman_, Ch. XI. The primitive conception of menstruation is briefly discussed in Appendix A to the first volume of these _Studies_, and more elaborately by J.G. Frazer in _The Golden Bough_. A large collection of facts with regard to the menstrual seclusion of women throughout the world will be found in Ploss and Bartels, _Das Weib_. The pubertal seclusion of girls at Torres Straits has been especially studied by Seligmann, _Reports Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits_, vol. v, Ch. VI. [29] Thus Miss Lura Sanborn, Director of Physical Training at the Chicago Normal School, found that a bath once a fortnight was not unusual. At the menstrual period especially there is still a superstitious dread of water. Girls should always be taught that at this period, above all, cleanliness is imperatively necessary. There should be a tepid hip bath night and morning, and a vaginal douche (which should never be cold) is always advantageous, both for comfort as well as cleanliness. There is not the slightest reason to dread water during menstruation. This point was discussed a few years ago in the _British Medical Journal_ with complete unanimity of opinion. A distinguished American obstetrician, also, Dr. J. Clifton Edgar, after a careful study of opinion and practice in this matter ("Bathing During the Menstrual Period," _American Journal Obstetrics_, Sept., 1900), concludes that it is possible and beneficial to take cold baths (though not sea-baths) during the period, provided due precautions are observed, and that there are no sudden changes of habits. Such a course should not be indiscriminately adopted, but there can be no doubt that in sturdy peasant women who are inured to it early in life even prolonged immersion in the sea in fishing has no evil results, and is even beneficial. Houzel (_Annales de Gynécologie_, Dec., 1894) has published statistics of the menstrual life of 123 fisherwomen on the French coast. They were accustomed to shrimp for hours at a time in the sea, often to above the waist, and then walk about in their wet clothes selling the shrimps. They all insisted that their menstruation was easier when they were actively at work. Their periods are notably regular, and their fertility is high. [30] J.H. McBride, "The Life and Health of Our Girls in Relation to Their Future," _Alienist and Neurologist_, Feb., 1904. [31] W.G. Chambers, "The Evolution of Ideals," _Pedagogical Seminary_, March, 1903; Catherine Dodd, "School Children's Ideals," _National Review_, Feb. and Dec., 1900, and June, 1901. No German girls acknowledged a wish to be men; they said it would be wicked. Among Flemish girls, however, Varendonck found at Ghent (_Archives de Psychologie_, July, 1908) that 26 per cent. had men as their ideals. [32] A. Reibmayr, _Die Entwicklungsgeschichte des Talentes und Genies_, 1908, Bd. i, p. 70. [33] R. Hellmann, _Ueber Geschlechtsfreiheit_, p. 14. [34] This belief seems frequent among young girls in Continental Europe. It forms the subject of one of Marcel Prevost's _Lettres de Femmes_. In Austria, according to Freud, it is not uncommon, exclusively among girls. [35] Yet, according to English law, rape is a crime which it is impossible for a husband to commit on his wife (see, e.g., Nevill Geary, _The Law of Marriage_, Ch. XV, Sect. V). The performance of the marriage ceremony, however, even if it necessarily involved a clear explanation of marital privileges, cannot be regarded as adequate justification for an act of sexual intercourse performed with violence or without the wife's consent. [36] Hirschfeld, _Jahrbuch für Sexuelle Zwischenstufen_, 1903, p. 88. It may be added that a horror of coitus is not necessarily due to bad education, and may also occur in hereditarily degenerate women, whose ancestors have shown similar or allied mental peculiarities. A case of such "functional impotence" has been reported in a young Italian wife of twenty-one, who was otherwise healthy, and strongly attached to her husband. The marriage was annulled on the ground that "rudimentary sexual or emotional paranoia, which renders a wife invincibly refractory to sexual union, notwithstanding the integrity of the sexual organs, constitutes psychic functional impotence" (_Archivio di Psichiatria_, 1906, fasc. vi, p. 806). [37] The reasonableness of this step is so obvious that it should scarcely need insistence. "The instruction of school-boys and school-girls is most adequately effected by an elderly doctor," Näcke remarks, "sometimes perhaps the school-doctor." "I strongly advocate," says Clouston (_The Hygiene of Mind_, p. 249), "that the family doctor, guided by the parent and the teacher, is by far the best instructor and monitor." Moll is of the same opinion. [38] I have further developed this argument in "Religion and the Child," _Nineteenth Century and After_, 1907. [39] The intimate relation of art and poetry to the sexual impulse has been realized in a fragmentary way by many who have not attained to any wide vision of auto-erotic activity in life. "Poetry is necessarily related to the sexual function," says Metchnikoff (_Essais Optimistes_, p. 352), who also quotes with approval the statement of Möbius (previously made by Ferrero and many others) that "artistic aptitudes must probably be considered as secondary sexual characters."