5 Sexual activities were just as liable to break out. They were all the more liable to break out, indeed, because fostered by ignorance, often unconscious of themselves, and not held in check by the restraints which knowledge and teaching might have furnished. This, however, has seemed a matter of no concern to the guardians of youth. They have congratulated themselves if they could pilot the youths, and especially the maidens, under their guardianship into the haven of matrimony not only in apparent chastity, but in ignorance of nearly everything that marriage signifies and involves, alike for the individual and the coming race.
This policy has been so firmly established that the theory of it has never been clearly argued out. So far as it exists at all, it is a theory that walks on two feet pointing opposite ways:
- sex things must not be talked about because they are "dirty";
- sex things must not be talked about because they are "sacred."
We must leave sex things alone, they say, because God will see to it that they manifest themselves aright and work for good; we must leave sex things alone, they also say, because there is no department in life in which the activity of the Devil is so specially exhibited.
The very same person may be guilty of this contradiction, when varying circumstances render it convenient. Such a confusion is, indeed, a fate liable to befall all ancient and deeply rooted tabus; we see it in the tabus against certain animals as foods (as the Mosaic prohibition of pork); at first the animal was too sacred to eat, but in time people came to think that it is too disgusting to eat.
They begin the practice for one reason, they continue it for a totally opposed reason.
Reasons are such a superficial part of our lives!