This is, indeed, especially the case when we are concerned with a new activity in the sphere of sex. The sexual relationships of life are so ancient and so wide, their roots ramify so complexly and run so deep, that any sudden disturbance in this soil, however well-intentioned, is certain to have many results which were not anticipated by those responsible for it. Any movement here runs the risk of defeating its own ends, or else, in gaining them, to render impossible other ends which are of not less value.
In this matter of sexual hygiene we are faced at the outset by the fact that the very recognition of any such branch of knowledge as "sexual hygiene" involves not merely a new departure, but the reversal of a policy which has been accepted, almost without question, for centuries.
Among many primitive peoples, indeed, we know that the boy and girl at puberty are initiated with solemnity, and even a not unwholesome hardship, into the responsibilities of adult life, including those which have reference to the duties and privileges of sex.
4 But in our own traditions scarcely even a relic of any such custom is preserved. On the contrary, we tacitly maintain a custom, and even a policy, of silent obscurantism.
Parents and teachers have considered it a duty to say nothing and have felt justified in telling lies, or "fairy tales," in order to maintain their attitude. The oncoming of puberty, with its alarming manifestations, especially in the girl, has often left them unmoved and still silent.
They have taken care that our elementary textbooks of anatomy and physiology, even when written by so independent and fearless a pioneer as Huxley, should describe the human body absolutely as though the organs and functions of reproduction had no existence. The instinct was not thus suppressed; all the inevitable stimulations which life furnishes to the youthful sexual impulse have continued in operation.