Note CE — Chapter XX · RULES OF EUGENICS

Le Pileur says: Lessons to young girls, showing them the dangers to which they expose themselves, can only have a favorable influence. Perhaps the physicians of Saint-Lazare will then hear no more, from at least one-fourth of all these unfortunate girls in this institution, that they have given themselves to some stranger. We will not hear twenty per cent. of them answer that they have allowed themselves to be defloured out of curiosity, to know what it is, to be as smart as their friends.

This ignorance is due to the fact that the majority of parents have no more knowledge of sex than what is known to every animal by instinct. Pinard (Chronique Médicale, 1903, p. 488) says: “Jusqu’à présent l’acte procréateur n’a été qu’un acte instinctif tel qu’il existait à l’âge des cavernes, c’est le seul de nos instincts n’ayant pas été civilisé. L’acte est accompli à l’aurore du XXe siècle comme à l’âge de pierre.”