that they ought to be known. And this I can also do--I can assure all
young people who read these pages that there is nothing whatever in the
facts of the case to be afraid of--nothing that they cannot know with
perfectly clean minds. There are no terrible mysteries in the matter.
There are no horrors in normal sex life. The truth even about the
ultimate intimacies of body between men and women is that when truly
achieved they are beautiful, and holy, and happy.

But how are young people to get the right knowledge? The worst possible
way in which to get it is to pick it up bit by bit in connection with
evil stories, the reports of divorce cases, and the hints of vice which
lurk in life's shadowy corners. Yet that has been the most common way
in the past. Quite little boys have passed on mysterious stories from
mouth to mouth defiling the whole matter. Many girls have first begun
to wonder and to ask questions when they first heard of an illegitimate
child. Words in the Bible, such as "lasciviousness" and so on, have
started mere school children asking questions to which probably they
only got distorted answers from other school children. Just because
their parents did not tell them anything, they have assumed that there
must be something to be ashamed of in the truth. And so ninety per cent
of boys, and I know not what proportion of girls, have the subject of
sex spoiled for them even before adolescence. Sex, sexual experience,
passion, and so on are things they think half unclean and yet
annoyingly interesting. They are half ashamed, and yet remain curious.
Some are half afraid. Some rather more than half disgusted. Some indeed
try to banish the whole subject from their minds. This may seem to be a
refined thing to do; but, as we know with a new definiteness since the
psychologists have explored the matter, it is really a disastrous thing
to do. For to adapt ourselves to sex is one of the problems that cannot
be escaped. In this world we cannot live the disembodied life. What we