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
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.