With regard to sexual matters, the best opinion of our best medical men,
the practice of those nations which have proved most vigorous and comely,
the evils that have followed this or that, the good that has attended
upon the other should be ascertained by men who, being neither moral nor
immoral and not caring two straws what the conclusion arrived at might
be, should desire only to get hold of the best available information.
The result should be written down with some fulness and put before the
young of both sexes as soon as they are old enough to understand such
matters at all. There should be no mystery or reserve. None but the
corrupt will wish to corrupt facts; honest people will accept them
eagerly, whatever they may prove to be, and will convey them to others as
accurately as they can. On what pretext therefore can it be well that
knowledge should be withheld from the universal gaze upon a matter of
such universal interest? It cannot be pretended that there is nothing to
be known on these matters beyond what unaided boys and girls can be left
without risk to find out for themselves. Not one in a hundred who
remembers his own boyhood will say this. How, then, are they excusable
who have the care of young people and yet leave a matter of such vital
importance so almost absolutely to take care of itself, although they
well know how common error is, how easy to fall into and how disastrous
in its effects both upon the individual and the race?
Next to sexual matters there are none upon which there is such complete
reserve between parents and children as on those connected with money.
The father keeps his affairs as closely as he can to himself and is most
jealous of letting his children into a knowledge of how he manages his
money. His children are like monks in a monastery as regards money and
he calls this training them up with the strictest regard to principle.
Nevertheless he thinks himself ill-used if his son, on entering life,
falls a victim to designing persons whose knowledge of how money is made
and lost is greater than his own.