The time has come when the rising generation must be thoroughly instructed
in this matter. That quack specific "ignorance" has been experimented with
quite too long already. The true method of insuring all persons, young or
old, against the abuses of any part, organ, function, or faculty of the
wondrous machinery of life, is to teach them its use. "Train a child in the
way it should go" or be sure it {454} will, amid the ten thousand
surrounding temptations, find out a way in which it should not go. Keeping
a child in ignorant innocence is, I aver, no part of the "training" which
has been taught by a wiser than Solomon. Boys and girls do know, will know,
and must know, that between them are important anatomical differences and
interesting physiological relations. Teach them, I repeat, their use, or
expect their abuse. Hardly a young person in the world would ever become
addicted to self-pollution if he or she understood clearly the
consequences; if he or she knew at the outset that the practice was
directly destroying the bodily stamina, vitiating the moral tone, and
enfeebling the intellect. No one would pursue the disgusting habit if he or
she was fully aware that it was blasting all prospects of health and
happiness in the approaching period of manhood and womanhood.