vice in life and the expert, it
is possible to say many necessary things that could not be said in public,
and it is possible, moreover, for the youth to ask questions which shyness
and reserve make it impossible to put to parents, while the convenient
opportunity of putting them naturally to the expert otherwise seldom or
never occurs. Most youths have their own special ignorances, their own
special difficulties, difficulties and ignorances that could sometimes be
resolved by a word. Yet it by no means infrequently happens that they
carry them far on into adult life because they have lacked the
opportunity, or the skill and assurance to create the opportunity, of
obtaining enlightenment.

It must be clearly understood that these talks are of medical, hygienic,
and physiological character; they are not to be used for retailing moral
platitudes. To make them that would be a fatal mistake. The young are
often very hostile to merely conventional moral maxims, and suspect their
hollowness, not always without reason. The end to be aimed at here is
enlightenment. Certainly knowledge can never be immoral, but nothing is
gained by jumbling up knowledge and morality together.

In emphasizing the nature of the physician's task in this matter as purely
and simply that of wise practical enlightenment, nothing is implied
against the advantages, and indeed the immense value in sexual hygiene, of
the moral, religious, ideal elements of life. It is not the primary
business of the physician to inspire these, but they have a very intimate
relation with the sexual life, and every boy and girl at puberty, and
never before puberty, should be granted the privilege--and not the duty or
the task--of initiation into those elements of the world's life which are,
at the same time, natural functions of the adolescent soul. Here, however,
is the sphere of the religious or ethical teacher. At puberty he has his
great opportunity, the greatest he can ever obtain. The flower of sex that
blossoms in the body at puberty has its spiritual counterpart which at the
same moment blossoms in the soul. The churches from of old have recognized
the religious significance of this moment, for it is this period of life
that they have appointed as the time of confirmation and similar rites.
With the progress of the ages, it is true, such rites become merely formal
and apparently meaningless fossils. But they have a meaning nevertheless,
and are capable of being agai