etite which in all ages has debased the weak, wrestled
fiercely with the strong and overwhelmed too often even the noble".
Adolescents suffer more from the lack of understanding, sympathy,
appreciation and wise guidance shown by their blind parents, than they do
from their own ignorance and perfervid imagination.

The transitions from radiant joy and confident expectation, reared on a
flimsy basis of supposition, to dire despair consequent on a wrong reading
of physical and mental changes, are rapid. Friends, lovers and heroes
quickly succeed one another, play their parts, and give place to others.

The awakening of the sexual appetite is usually ignored, and children are
left to gain knowledge of man's noblest power from companions, casual
references in the Bible and other books, and unguarded references in
conversation. Under such conditions not one in a thousand--and _your_ child
is _not_ that one--escapes impurity and degraded sex ideas.

Wherever youth congregate, this subject crops up, and those who talk most
freely to the others are just those with the most distorted and vicious
ideas, whose discourse abounds in obscene detail and ribald jest. Your
child must learn either from ignorant, unclean minds, or be taught in a
clean, sacred way, which will rob sex of secrecy and obscenity; _learn he
will_; if you will not teach your child, his pet rabbit will.

When children ask awkward questions, say quietly that such matters are not
discussed with children, but promise to tell them all about it when they
are ten years old; delay no longer, for most children learn self-abuse
between ten and twelve.

Self-abuse is a bad habit, and no more a "sin" than is biting the nails.
Unfortunately, people with no other qualification than a desire to do good,
wrongly harp on the "sin" of it and draw lurid pictures of physical and
mental wreck as the end of such "sinners", ignorant that if all
masturbators went mad the world would be one huge asylum.

Exaggeration never pays in teaching youth. Tell the truth, which is bad
enough without adding "white lies" with an eye to effect.

Coitus causes slight prostration, Nature's device to remind man to keep
sexual intercourse within bounds, for while in moderation it is harmless,
in excess it causes great prostration. _Exactly the same applies to
self-abuse_, for, paradoxical as it seems, the real harm is done by the
_fear_ of the supposed harm.

The masturbator first suffers from the