ter, there is the difficulty that it is no
longer so easy to talk simply and naturally about such things; the mother
is beginning to feel too shy to speak for the first time about these
difficult subjects to a son or a daughter who is nearly as big as herself.
She feels that she can only do it awkwardly and ineffectively, and she
probably decides not to do it at all. Thus an atmosphere of mystery is
created with all the embarrassing and perverting influences which mystery
encourages.

There can be no doubt that, more especially in highly intelligent
children with vague and unspecialized yet insistent sexual
impulses, the artificial mystery with which sex is too often
clothed not only accentuates the natural curiosity but also tends
to favor the morbid intensity and even prurience of the sexual
impulse. This has long been recognized. Dr. Beddoes wrote at the
beginning of the nineteenth century: "It is in vain that we
dissemble to ourselves the eagerness with which children of
either sex seek to satisfy themselves concerning the conformation
of the other. No degree of reserve in the heads of families, no
contrivances, no care to put books of one description out of
sight and to garble others, has perhaps, with any one set of
children, succeeded in preventing or stifling this kind of
curiosity. No part of the history of human thought would perhaps
be more singular than the stratagems devised by young people in
different situations to make themselves masters or witnesses of
the secret. And every discovery, due to their own inquiries, can
but be so much oil poured upon an imagination in flames" (T.
Beddoes, _Hygeia_, 1802, vol. iii, p. 59). Kaan, again, in one of
the earliest books on morbid sexuality, sets down mystery as one
of the causes of _psychopathia sexualis_. Marro (_La Puberta_, p.
299) points out how the veil of mystery thrown over sexual
matters merely serves to concentrate attention on them. The
distinguished Dutch writer Multatuli, in one of his letters
(quoted with approval by Freud), remarks on the dangers of hiding
things from boys and girls in a veil of mystery, pointing out
that this must only heighten the curiosity of children, and so
far from keeping them pure, which mere ignorance can never do,
heats and perverts their imaginations. Mrs. Mary Wood Allen,
also, warns the mother (op. cit