[Sidenote: Influence of ideals.]
Many there are among the believers in the larger sex-education who feel
sure that a young man's greatest safety lies in having high ideals of
womanhood. I have known a number of men who passed unscathed through
the storm and stress of early manhood because each of them could say,
as Tennyson makes the lover confess to Princess Ida, "from earlier than
I know, immersed in rich foreshadowings of the world, I loved the
woman." Some of these men learned to love "the woman" in the abstract,
in the dream world, perhaps as the "brushwood girl" of Kipling. Others
first loved "the woman" through boyhood sweethearts. Still others came
to love her through mothers who inspired them with reverence for
womanhood and motherhood.
..."Happy he
With such a mother! faith in womankind
Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high comes easy
to him."
(Tennyson)
But it matters little for the future purity of the boy on the threshold
of manhood whether he has learned to love "the woman" in the dreamland
of youth or in the very real world of life. It is simply a question of
the intensity of the devotion and of the loftiness of the ideals which
She has aroused within him.
[Sidenote: Who may influence boys.]
Now, we of the older generation, who as parents and teachers are
largely the makers of the boy's view of life, may play a very important
part in developing in him a love for "the woman," a reverence for
womanhood. The greatest opportunity falls to the lot of that mother
whose natural gifts and education adapt her for impressing her son
profoundly with appreciation of womanhood. The next greatest
opportunity comes to the woman who as an instructor in school, church,
or other institution comes into intimate relations that sometimes give
the teacher greater influence than the mother is able or willing to
exert. Finally, we must not discount the value of men's cooperation in
this problem, for many a boy's attitude towards women is largely the
reflection of what he has seen in his father and in other men,
particularly in his teachers both secular and religious.
Now, while the direct influence of personality is most important in
this problem of developing a young man's attitude towards women,
organized educational effort should not be neglected. It is important
that both men and women help by encouraging young men to read good
literature that unobtrusively tends to introduce them to the best in
womanhood (see Sec. 23); and by discussing with them, as opportunity
offers, the higher ideals of the relationships between men and women.