o do. Normal adults can very
well protect themselves against their attentions, when they are warned
by sufficient instruction in sexual questions.

The child, on the other hand, has the right to be protected against
all contamination by perversion, as against all sexual assault of
whatever nature, and it is the duty of society to organize its
protection. But this cannot be done unless society is itself
instructed on the question, and in a position to give a rational
education to youth such as we have sketched above.

If dangerous congenital perversions are discovered, such as sadism and
pederosis, energetic measures of protection should be taken; in grave
cases, the operations we have spoken of, or permanent internment.

Apart from suggestion, there is no better remedy against masturbation
than a system of education such as that in force in the
Landerziehungsheime, especially continuous physical labor combined
with useful and attractive intellectual occupation. When such a system
of education is put in force at an early age, the sexual appetite
develops more slowly and more moderately, and has the most favorable
influence on the whole sexual life of man.

In speaking of masturbation in Chapter VIII we have seen that it may
be the expression of very different conditions, and we should act
accordingly.

=Eroticism in Childhood.=--By giving children betimes the requisite
instruction on the sexual question, they are tranquilized. Many boys
and girls give themselves up to despair because of the erroneous and
terrifying ideas they have of sexual affairs. On the one hand, they
hear pornographic remarks which disgust them, while their parents
envelop the subject in mystery; on the other hand, their sexual
appetites evoke desire and call for satisfaction. When a young man in
this state of mind has an emission, either spontaneously or as the
result of artificial excitation, he is seized with anxiety and shame,
often also with phantoms of disease and moral depravity. He then
requires almost heroic resolution to unburden his mind to a doctor or
to his father. With nervous subjects, inclined to be melancholic or
hypochondriacal, such a state of mind sometimes leads to suicide.

Another advantage in the instruction of children in sexual matters is
that the questions of heredity, alcohol and venereal disease can be
explained to them at the same time. In giving these explanations it is
important not to awaken eroticism in the ch