blems are not new, not insignificant, and that many
another man has met and solved them in such a way as to make life more
full of real happiness. Such sympathetic helpfulness will mean
something to a young man, but he cannot be led far by one who in his
own early experience has not learned both the strength and the mastery
of the sexual instincts.

[Sidenote: Women should know.]

In another lecture I have discussed the proposition that it would be
better for all concerned if women could have scientific understanding
of the physiological facts concerning the sexual tendencies of men, not
to make women more lenient or forgiving towards the mistakes of men,
but rather to enable women to play an important part in the necessary
adjustments through helpful comradeship. This last phrase will mean
nothing to many people, but in many a modern home a well-informed wife
has been able to lead the way to the satisfactory solution of the
fundamental problems of life.

[Sidenote: Self-control in marriage.]

There is another and an all-important phase of the problem of teaching
self-control which is commonly overlooked by those who are trying to
help young men solve their greatest problems. I have in mind the need
of self-control in marriage. Most writers and lecturers who emphasize
the arguments for absolute self-control or continence before marriage,
omit all reference to marital life. The natural inference, and one
widely followed, is that the only moral duty of a young man is to
control his intense desires and avoid illicit relations until sexual
abandon is permitted under the license of the law and the benediction
of the church. Such, I submit, is a fair conclusion for young men to
draw from at least ninety per cent of the sex-education literature that
is current to-day.

Now, I believe this is all wrong. In fact, I am so radical as to
believe that the intelligent women of the world would gain more from
temperance and unselfishness and delicacy of men in sexual functioning
in marriage than from sexual continence before marriage. Of course, I
do not propose that ideal sexual conditions in marriage may justify
pre-marital incontinence, but I make this sharp contrast simply to
emphasize the belief that sexual intemperance and selfishness of men in
marriage causes more mental and physical suffering of women than does
sexual incontinence of men before marriage, and I am not forgetting the
vast problem of social diseases and pros