indigestion, and sees incipient tuberculosis in every household! So the
embryonic psychologist finds 'degenerates' in every crowd of boys,
'hypnotic suggestion' in every popular preacher, and 'aphasia' in any
friend who forgets names and faces! Dr. Moll gives more protection
against such exaggerated inferences than is commonly given in books on
pathology, but many of his readers will do well to be on their guard
lest they interpret perfectly innocent behavior as a symptom of
abnormality. The mischief done by our present ignorance and neglect of
important features of sex-behavior should be prevented without the
incidence of mischief from exaggerated expectations and unwise meddling.

It would be evasive to shirk mention of the fact that many of the most
devoted servants of health and morals object to public discussion of the
facts of sex. They discard enlightenment about sex as relatively
unimportant because a clean ancestry, decency in the family and
neighborhood, and noble needs in friendship, love, and marriage must, in
any case, be the main roots of healthy direction and ideal restraint of
the sex-instinct. Or they fear enlightenment as a possible stimulus to
undesirable imagination and experimentation. Or they dislike, even
abhor, it as esthetically repulsive--shocking to an unreasoned but
cherished craving for silence about these things--a craving which the
customs of our land and time have made an unwritten law of society.

Of the first of these three attitudes, it may be said briefly that the
relative unimportance of enlightenment is a fact, but no argument
against it. Modesty, austerity, and clean living on the part of parents
will counterbalance much negligence in direct guidance or protection.
But the former need be in no wise lessened by improving the latter. Of
the second, I dare affirm that if the men and women in America should
stop whatever they are doing for an evening and read this book, there
would be less harmful imagination as a result than from the occupations
which its reading would replace. Of all the causes of sexual disorder,
the reading of scientific books by reputable men is surely the least!
The third--that is, the esthetic--repulsion toward publicity in respect
to the natural history of sex, I will not pretend to judge. Only we must
not strain at gnats and swallow camels. It is no sign of true esthetic
or moral sensitiveness for a person to be shocked by 'Ghosts,' 'Mrs.
Warren's Profession,