ural, but it need not be
unhealthful, if hygienic adaptations are made. Likewise, seminal
emissions are unnatural for primitive men or animals without sexual
restraint, but this does not mean that they are unhealthful for
self-controlled men. Here, as in many other cases, comparison with
animals is misleading and does not teach us useful facts concerning
human sexual functioning. The truth is that physicians have no
evidence of harm from emissions that are not caused by voluntary
activity.

VIII

SPECIAL SEX-INSTRUCTION FOR ADOLESCENT BOYS AND YOUNG MEN

[Sidenote: Methods and teachers.]

In this lecture I shall discuss a number of problems in the relations
of men to women which ought somehow to be made clear to boys who are in
transition to manhood. I can do little more than point out the lines
along which it is desirable that young men should be informed and
influenced; for I confess that I do not know any guaranteed pedagogical
method for teaching along these lines. So far as I can now see, it
seems to me that a good beginning would consist in getting the best
ideas before young men by lectures, books, and personal conversations.
Here more than in any other phase of sex-education the influence of
personality is of great importance. Many an ordinary teacher or
lecturer may well present the cold facts of biological science that
help interpret sex, but one who does not by his personal qualities
command the entire confidence of his hearers is worse than useless in
presenting to young men such problems as those outlined in this lecture
under the following subheadings: Developing young men's attitude
towards womanhood; developing ideals of love and marriage; reasons for
pre-marital continence; essential knowledge concerning prostitution;
need of more refinement in men; dancing as a sex problem for men; dress
as a sexual appeal; the problem of self-control; the mental side of a
young man's sex life.

Sec. 30. _Developing Attitude towards Womanhood_

[Sidenote: Influence of ideals.]

Many there are among the believers in the larger sex-education who feel
sure that a young man's greatest safety lies in having high ideals of
womanhood. I have known a number of men who passed unscathed through
the storm and stress of early manhood because each of them could say,
as Tennyson makes the lover confess to Princess Ida, "from earlier than
I know, immersed in rich foreshadowings of the world, I loved the
woman." So