Men, Women, and God | Page 7

are to get in first. No general
rules about the right age can be laid down. Children differ enormously in regard to the
ages at which they pass from stage to stage in their development. You will need to watch
and to understand. Above all do not let your telling take the form of mere prohibitions.
Do not let it stand related in the first case to warnings against sins. You do not want to
associate the idea of sin in the first case with this subject at all. What you can do is to
implant a certain reverence in a child's mind in relation to the whole matter, and if you
succeed in that you will have forearmed your child against sin. I long to know that
children are learning about sex not in association with scoldings, reproofs, and warnings,
but rather as part of the splendid truth of God. It is the association of the facts of sex with
the sins of men and women that has spoilt this part of life for most minds. Of course it is
only kind to tell boys and girls where it is that they may go wrong--it is necessary to put
them on their guard. But that should be a secondary matter--a mere addition to your
teaching.
My own experience as a minister has brought to my knowledge several very pathetic
instances of how young girls get into very serious trouble just through lack of the
knowledge their mothers ought to have given them. It seems possible still for a girl even
of seventeen or eighteen, or even much older, to be almost incredibly ignorant, and no
words are too strong to describe the cruelty of allowing them to face life in that condition.
In any case let your teaching be, in general terms at least, complete before adolescence. If
you wait till adolescence has begun, the telling may cause undue excitement. If you finish
your general teaching before that stage it will save your child from much unwholesome
curiosity.
And here, though the subject must necessarily be distasteful to many, as it is to myself, I
must put in a word about self-abuse. [Footnote: Knowing from experience that a good
many parents do not even know what self-abuse means, let me simply say that it consists
in such handling of the genital organs as creates emotional and physical sexual
excitement of a kind that is obviously unnatural.] In recent years a large number of men
have given me their confidence, so that I am not speaking from hearsay when I state that
a percentage of men which probably approximates to seventy-five are, at least for a time,
victims of this habit.

I know that it is easy to exaggerate the physical and mental evil effects of it. But what is
beyond all question is that it produces bad psychic consequences, and does so leave men
out of conceit with themselves that when they realize that they have become victims to
the habit their mental sufferings are often pitifully acute. Indeed, it is because my pity
and sympathy have been so drawn out to many men I know that I cannot forbear to speak
on behalf of those who may yet be saved from it. The facts about it are that the habit is
often begun at an almost inconceivably early age. It is very often begun without any
sense that it is wrong, and certainly without any knowledge of how evil it is. And once it
has been begun, it is horribly hard to abandon. Uncounted good men have to confess
to-day that in their younger days they never did achieve liberation in spite of constant
efforts. Uncounted men have brought about in this way a certain perversion of their
natures with regard to their sexual functions which clouded their lives for many years.
And yet the cure for this situation is very simple and almost easy. The men who have
completely escaped practically all testify that they owe their immunity to the kindly and
timely advice of some wise senior. The habit is not natural, and therefore it is not hard
never to begin it. If it has not been begun in boyhood a very little determination will keep
an adult man from falling into it. And this means that in this case parents can, if they will,
save the rising generation. Perhaps it is mothers chiefly who will have to render this
service just because the habit is begun so very early, while boys are still in very close
association with their mothers. I may seem to be contradicting what I have just said about
mere warnings, but I would certainly say that any sort of arresting warning is better than
inaction in the matter. Yet even in this