PREFACE


In these Essays--little, indeed, as I know them to be, compared to the
magnitude of their subjects--I have tried to set forth, as clearly as I
can, certain fundamental principles, together with their practical
application to the life of our time. Some of these principles were stated,
more briefly and technically, in my larger _Studies_ of sex; others were
therein implied but only to be read between the lines. Here I have
expressed them in simple language and with some detail. It is my hope that
in this way they may more surely come into the hands of young people,
youths and girls at the period of adolescence, who have been present to my
thoughts in all the studies I have written of sex because I was myself of
that age when I first vaguely planned them. I would prefer to leave to
their judgment the question as to whether this book is suitable to be
placed in the hands of older people. It might only give them pain. It is
in youth that the questions of mature age can alone be settled, if they
ever are to be settled, and unless we begin to think about adult problems
when we are young all our thinking is likely to be in vain. There are but
few people who are able when youth is over either on the one hand to
re-mould themselves nearer to those facts of Nature and of Society they
failed to perceive, or had not the courage to accept, when they were
young, or, on the other hand, to mould the facts of the exterior world
nearer to those of their own true interior world. One hesitates to bring
home to them too keenly what they have missed in life. Yet, let us
remember, even for those who have missed most, there always remains the
fortifying and consoling thought that they may at least help to make the
world better for those who come after them, and the possibilities of human
adjustment easier for others than it has been for themselves. They must