eighteen, or even much older, to be almost incredibly ignorant, and no
words are too strong to describe the cruelty of allowing them to face
life in that condition.

In any case let your teaching be, in general terms at least, complete
before adolescence. If you wait till adolescence has begun, the telling
may cause undue excitement. If you finish your general teaching before
that stage it will save your child from much unwholesome curiosity.

And here, though the subject must necessarily be distasteful to many,
as it is to myself, I must put in a word about self-abuse. [Footnote:
Knowing from experience that a good many parents do not even know what
self-abuse means, let me simply say that it consists in such handling
of the genital organs as creates emotional and physical sexual
excitement of a kind that is obviously unnatural.] In recent years a
large number of men have given me their confidence, so that I am not
speaking from hearsay when I state that a percentage of men which
probably approximates to seventy-five are, at least for a time, victims
of this habit.

I know that it is easy to exaggerate the physical and mental evil
effects of it. But what is beyond all question is that it produces bad
psychic consequences, and does so leave men out of conceit with
themselves that when they realize that they have become victims to the
habit their mental sufferings are often pitifully acute. Indeed, it is
because my pity and sympathy have been so drawn out to many men I know
that I cannot forbear to speak on behalf of those who may yet be saved
from it. The facts about it are that the habit is often begun at an
almost inconceivably early age. It is very often begun without any
sense that it is wrong, and certainly without any knowledge of how evil