he sexual initiation of the
child--apart from such scientific information as would form part of school
courses in botany and zooelogy--should be the exclusive privilege of the
mother, or whomever it may be to whom the mother's duties are delegated.
At puberty more authoritative and precise advice is desirable than the
mother may be able or willing to give. It is at this age that she should
put into her son's or daughter's hands some one or other of the very
numerous manuals to which reference has already been made (page 53),
expounding the physical and moral aspects of the sexual life and the
principles of sexual hygiene. The boy or girl is already, we may take it,
acquainted with the facts of motherhood, and the origin of babies, as well
as, more or less precisely, with the father's part in their procreation.
Whatever manual is now placed in his or her hands should at least deal
summarily, but definitely, with the sexual relationship, and should also
comment, warningly but in no alarmist spirit, with the chief auto-erotic
phenomena, and by no means exclusively with masturbation. Nothing but good
can come of the use of such a manual, if it has been wisely selected; it
will supplant what the mother has already done, what the teacher may still
be doing, and what later may be done by private interview with a doctor.
It has indeed been argued that the boy or girl to whom such literature is
presented will merely make it an opportunity for morbid revelry and
sensual enjoyment. It can well be believed that this may sometimes happen
with boys or girls from whom all sexual facts have always been
mysteriously veiled, and that when at last they find the opportunity of
gratifying their long-repressed and perfectly natural curiosity they are
overcome by the excitement of the event. It could not happen to children
who have been naturally and wholesomely brought up. At a later age, during
adolescence, there is doubtless great advantage in the plan, now
frequently adopted, especially in Germany, of giving lectures, addresses,
or quiet talks to young people of each sex separately. The speaker is
usually a specially selected teacher, a doctor or other qualified person
who may be brought in for this special purpose.

Stanley Hall, after remarking that sexual education should be
chiefly from fathers to sons and from mothers to daughters, adds:
"It may be that in the future this kind of initiation will again
become an art, an