notice. I know that in the countries of exaggerated prudery there
is much hidden corruption, more, one is sometimes inclined to
think, than in less hypocritical countries. But I believe that
that is a false impression, and am persuaded that precisely
because of all these little concealments which excite the
malicious amusement of foreigners, there are really many more
young people in England who remain chaste than in the countries
which treat sexual relations more frankly. At all events, if I
have known Englishmen who were very debauched and very refined in
vice, I have also known young men of the same nation, over
twenty, who were as innocent as children, but never a young
Frenchman, Italian, or Spaniard of whom this could be said."
There is undoubtedly truth in this statement, though it must be
remembered that, excellent as chastity is, if it is based on mere
ignorance, its possessor is exposed to terrible dangers.

The question of sexual hygiene, more especially in its special aspect of
sexual enlightenment, is not, however, dependent on the fact that in some
children the psychic and nervous manifestation of sex appears at an
earlier age than in others. It rests upon the larger general fact that in
all children the activity of intelligence begins to work at a very early
age, and that this activity tends to manifest itself in an inquisitive
desire to know many elementary facts of life which are really dependent on
sex. The primary and most universal of these desires is the desire to know
where children come from. No question could be more natural; the question
of origins is necessarily a fundamental one in childish philosophies as,
in more ultimate shapes, it is in adult philosophies. Most children,
either guided by the statements, usually the misstatements, of their
elders, or by their own intelligence working amid such indications as are
open to them, are in possession of a theory of the origin of babies.