y is not yet entirely clear. The fact is that a good beginning has
been made, especially in teaching concerning social diseases, heredity,
and eugenics.

[Sidenote: Social hygiene and ethics.]

The value of all the proposed teaching concerning the relation of
immorality and social diseases is more ethical than hygienic. Read any
of the standard literature on the social side of venereal diseases,
especially the masterly writings of the eminent physician and chief
organizer of the American movement for sex-education, the late Dr.
Prince A. Morrow, of New York City; and one notes that the medical
facts have bearings in two directions. First, they indicate the
desirability of morality as a protection of personal health; and
second, they teach that the pathological results of the individual's
immoral living may be passed on later to innocent wives and children.
The first is as clearly personal hygiene as teaching that impure water
may cause typhoid; but the second is social hygiene and ethics. The
second is more impressive to all but the most selfish people.

There is good reason for believing that information concerning the
social diseases is more likely to impress the average young man through
the social-ethical appeal much more than as a matter of personal
health. Therefore, a biological lesson on social diseases, which may be
presented most logically in connection with other germ diseases, may
have its chief value in that its meaning is social and ethical.

[Sidenote: Biology and ethics.]

As another illustration of biology touching ethics, I have recently
come to believe that the teaching concerning heredity and eugenics,
which should be a standard part of the best sex-instruction, has its
greatest value in the ethical appeal, and not in the direct biological
application of the laws of heredity which underlie eugenics. I realize
that this statement is likely to be disputed by those biologists who
see in eugenics only the possibility of controlling heredity so as to
propagate better strains of humans, just as breeders of plants and
animals have produced better domesticated varieties. A biologist
naturally believes that the ultimate aim of eugenics is improvement
of physical and psychical qualities; but considering the
ethical-social-biological complications of human sex-problems, it seems
improbable that any decided and extensive improvement is likely to
come if we continue to limit our interpretation of the princip