ild by dwelling more than
necessary on sexual topics. Instruction in this subject should not be
given too frequently; on the contrary, the attention of youth should,
as far as possible, be drawn away from sexual questions to other
subjects, till the age of maturity.

With the same object, erotic and pornographic literature should be
condemned. Unfortunately, many novels and dramas which meet with the
approbation of society, thanks to their fashionable or even decent
form of presentation, are often full of half-veiled eroticism, which
is much more exciting to the sexual appetite than the brutal and
realistic descriptions of Zola or Brieux, or even the erotic art of de
Maupassant.

A doctor once told me that in his country the country children, who
observed copulation among animals, often made similar attempts
themselves, while bathing or otherwise. Yet these country-people are
no more corrupt or degenerate than the townspeople. Here again,
proper instruction and warnings would be the best remedy, especially
in the case of girls.

What is to be said, on the contrary, of certain Austrian judges who
punish by imprisonment urchins of fourteen, who have copulated with
girls of the same age or made them pregnant? Have they punished the
real culprit? Do they imagine that they have done anything that will
improve these children?

The confession of Catholics plays a deplorable pedagogic part in the
sexual domain. We may admit that some high-minded priests may be
capable of modifying their interpretation of the prescriptions of
Liguori and others which we have cited, and do little or no harm to
young people of either sex. It must, however, be recognized--and the
most devout Catholic cannot deny it--that priests are only human, and
have not all the noble spirit nor the tact to fulfill the ideal
required of them in their behavior toward women. This is enough to
make the confessional, in many cases, a depraved institution from the
sexual point of view. On this subject, I refer the reader to what has
already been said in Chapter XII on the experiences of the Canadian
reformer, father Chiniqui.

The following instance is very characteristic. A very prudish man,
observing children of both sexes bathing together, exclaimed to them
indignantly, that this was improper. Thereupon a little boy replied
naively: "We do not know which is a boy nor which is a girl, because
we have no clothes." This charming reply shows how certain moral