work for a purified and dignified
attitude which sees vulgarity and impurity only when the functions of
sex have been voluntarily and knowingly misused and thereby debased.
Sex-education must work against the idea that sexual processes are
inherently vulgar, degraded, base, and impure. Such an interpretation
is correct only when sexual instincts are uncontrolled and thereby out
of harmony with the highest ideals of life. But control does not mean
asceticism which aims at complete subjugation of sexual instincts and
would annihilate them if that were biologically possible. The early
Christians, disgusted with the sexual degradation of the paganistic and
materialistic Romans, preached a doctrine of sexual asceticism as the
ideal for those who would rise to the heights of spiritual life. This
pessimistic interpretation of the relation of sex and life has
persisted even in some ecclesiastical teachings of the twentieth
century, and probably has had not a little responsibility for the
widely accepted and depressing view that sex is a necessary but
regrettable fact of human life.

[Sidenote: Attitude changing.]

Fortunately, the old ascetic point of view is passing rapidly.
Nineteenth-century science has given us a nobler view of the physical
world. Scientifically considered, matter is no longer base and
degraded. Especially has the biological science of the past fifty years
made _living_ matter and its activities profoundly impressive. And of
the life-activities none are so significant and so all-important as
those relating to the perpetuation of the human species. Biological
science has taught this emphatically, and the processes connected with
sex have been lifted to a place of dignity and purity.

[Sidenote: AEsthetic attitude desirable.]

The old asceticism, with its uniformly dark outlook on life, has no
lessons worth while in our modern problems relating to sex.[10] We need
severe control and not annihilation of our most powerful instincts. The
bright outlook of aesthetics rather than the dark one of asceticism
should prevail, for sex-instincts and processes are essentially pure
and beautiful phases of that wonderful something we call "life."
Sex-education should aim to give this attitude by presenting life as
fundamentally free from the degradation arising from misuse and
misunderstanding of sex.

[Sidenote: Not a new ideal.]

The aesthetic interpretation of sex is no new ideal. Canon Lyttleton,
formerly Head