I. THE THRESHOLD OF MANHOOD

Adolescence.—It is usual to say that youth, from its pinnacle, surveys the promised land of manhood as Moses on the mountain top saw another promised land. But Moses was old, and was prohibited entry into the land; youth is young, and, but for premature death, will know every detail of the valley of manhood for long years. Youth sees the valley, which has its heights too, not clearly, but through mists of illusion: especially romantic mists of misconception of love and of his probability of success, and gross mists due to early perverted education. This book will aid in clearing away some of these mists, that the true beauty of the valley may better appear.

The period of adolescence usually occurs between fourteen and sixteen, although it may be hastened or retarded in exceptional cases. The altered physical nature is reflected in the mental and spiritual nature. G. Stanley Hall, in his notable work, “Adolescence,” speaks of this period as “a new birth,” and proceeds:

“Powers and faculties, essentially non-existent before, are now born, and of the older instincts and impulses some are reinforced and greatly developed, while others become subordinate, so that new relations are established, and the ego finds a new center.”

Heredity has played its chief part; the childish environment, especially the intricate and often hidden ties between son and parents, has started the development; now a physical change takes place in the youth, which slowly lifts him from boyhood to manhood. Physically, mentally, morally, the man is being slowly shaped; out of the plastic material of youth, as played upon by the outside world, the youth himself is shaping what the man will be. A puppy is born with its eyes closed; the usual youth faces life with his eyes largely closed. Tactful and skilful handling by others, intelligent direction by himself, may make a rounded and developed man of him; cramming, bullying, and ignorance or false teaching concerning the things which most vitally concern him, may warp and twist him for the rest of his days.

Education in Life.—In much of the world, education in sexual matters is the accepted thing. Savage tribes usually have it. Oriental civilizations practice it today. Our ancestors, down to Christianity, knew it. But the pendulum went so far in this direction that Christianity adopted the opposite extreme. The body, it held, was worthless, along with all of this world; only the next world was important. Everything of the body was vile, everything of the soul sacred. Out of this grew the taboo or prohibition of discussion upon this vital subject, from which Christian culture has suffered ever since.

For this teaching is not true; the earth, the body, are not vile. Man in a wholesale way can not long live a lie; accordingly, the practice of men from the beginning contradicted the theory, and the excessive devotion to things of the body wormed its way throughout mankind, and even to the inmost heights of the church itself. The parent, if he or she is to aid the son best to face life, must face reality here, and disregard the taboo; the parent must educate the son about his body.

Suppose the parent keeps silent, as too many do; does this mean that the son will grow up, a pure and unstained Galahad, until somehow instinctively, on his marriage night, the truth is revealed to him in a lightning flash of inspiration? The contrary is usually the case. Boys will and must learn of sex and their bodies. They learn from chance hints dropped by their elders; they learn from books, even the Bible and the dictionary; most of all, they learn from the more corrupt and less restrained of their companions. Undirected, they are almost sure to get a gutter conception of sex: masturbation or onanism, relations with other boys, and relations with women without real love, will be taught the average boy during grammar school days, if he is not guarded by the one sure defense, a knowledge of the facts.

This knowledge is the more valuable, if to it be added to a restrained example on the part of his parents. If the boy has a father whose life he can admire, if the girl has a mother whose actions are restrained, this example is a louder preachment than words spoken or read. The simple mysteries of life can be pointed out in the life-stories of plants and animals; the mystery of new-hatched birds and animals becomes a clean and simple symbol of the boy’s own origin, and points to him the role that he will, in the normal course of nature, fulfil.

Training of the Adolescent.—The first great essential in training the adolescent is keeping the body fit. The sexual nature will be strong enough; have no fear of that. Nature’s method is, in the male, an insatiable desire; in the female, an almost insatiable receptivity. A female gnat can create 1,000,000,000 individuals in one month; a normal woman could have more than thirty children, and a normal man could be father to many thousands. The conditions of our life have made this unnecessary and indeed economically impossible; the task is to rein human reproduction, not to stimulate it. Normal exercise drains off excess energy, and postpones the boy’s inevitable sexual insistence. This is even more true of the boy forced to work in office, workshop, or factory during the day. Beyond the negative restraint thus bred, there is a positive result in bodily well-being. For the man will regret to the end of his days if he has let himself develop into a weakling. Sport is an admirable regimen, both for its self-development and for its production of social spirit, or team work, which is so essential to a happy participation in human society.

Keeping the mind fit is almost as important; and that means adequate education, especially in the facts of the universe; in acquiring a scientific framework in which to fit the facts, and in cultivating hobbies of investigation in appropriate places in this frame. Too much coddling of the ego is incompatible with a real understanding of the vastness of the universe, and of the relative permanent unimportance of the individual. Out of this will grow the moral virtues, truth, straightforwardness, desire for the noble and good, and that temporary unselfishness which is the highest form of selfishness.

At adolescence, the boy’s organs of generation alter especially. In addition to the deepening in his voice, the squareness of his shoulders, the increased firmness in the muscles, there comes the growth of hair under the arms and elsewhere on the body, and the increased size of the reproductive organs. The boy who understands this in advance is forearmed. During the whole adolescent stage, the seminal fluid is pre-eminently needed by the growing body. The body secretes it, and reabsorbs it; that which it cannot absorb is rejected by a natural process, usually during sleep. The boy, unprepared for this, will surely be worried by it; misinformation from ignorant companions, the advertisements of quack doctors, will alarm him with threats of loss of manly vigor and other mainly imaginary ills. If the boy indulges his sexual nature at this time, in onanism or intercourse, the body may be and in most cases is permanently weakened and stunted. There is a time for all things; and the time for sexual reservation is during the growing period of adolescence.

The growth of sentiment at this period will induce the boy to turn to the poets, the philosophers, and the nobler forms of literature; for he is shaping high ideals, which will to some extent control his life afterwards. All of these are helpful, if contact with them is based upon a root knowledge of his own body and of the scientific facts of the universe. Armed with a knowledge of sex, he cannot be too severely harmed by the smutty gossip of companions, or by pornographic books and pictures which may come before his attention. The ignorant boy is unhealthily stimulated by such books; the sting is taken out of them by a comprehension of the facts of life.

Growth of Sentiment.—Now begins an alteration in his way of regarding women. As a child, he has not bothered especially about his difference from girls; now they become collectively the desired ones, and he is sure sooner or later to pick out one of them as his beloved one. As Mantegazza says in his “The Book of Love,” “Rarely is the first love true love”; the youth fixes his affections on the most convenient and nearest girl, as a rule; only a process of trial and error will eliminate those unsuitable as life companions from those suitable.

If he has been properly aided in his thinking, he will neither make the mistake of shrining woman as a deity, or of debasing her as a mere sex vehicle; or, worse yet, combining these two false notions into a morality which isolates a few women as angels, and lowers others into demons. The truth is that they are neither essentially lower nor higher than he himself; they are shoulder to shoulder with him, in a relative equality. A father can do much here, in the way in which he treats his own wife. Children insensibly absorb the real home attitude of their parents; if this be vicious, all the moral platitudes in the world cannot school the boy.

Along with this attitude at home, the wise parent will keep an eye upon his son’s companions. He will not look for fine clothes or the reverse, but for straightforward manly boys and decent girls, the more intelligent the better.

Sex in Life.—Early in the history of life, at about the stage of the barnacles, the primitive female gave birth to a male separate from herself, and the long procession of the males had commenced. The influence of female sexual selection, which controlled down to the time of man, slowly evolved the male from his diminutive size and limited functions to a being as large as herself, or larger; and the development of an artistic sense in her gave what is called male efflorescence, or the gorgeous colors of male birds, the beards and manes of goats, men, lions, and horses, the branching antlers of stags, and many another ornamental sex differentiation. When the stage of man is reached, sex has assumed an importance which cannot easily be over-estimated. On the obvious side, it concerns much of the contact during the period of adolescent and young maturity, in all of the details connected with the selection and winning of a mate. After the mate is obtained, it plays its important part in controlling the whole love life of the man and woman. Underneath all this, it is the driving force that impels to many of life’s activities. A man makes and increases a competency or a fortune, builds a house, succeeds in his private or public business, to earn the good will and continued love of some woman; tunnels are driven through mountains, oceans united by great canals, hills levelled and deserts watered into rose gardens, largely for the same motive.

Reproduction is one of the primary tendencies of life; to prohibit it is a perversion. Enforced celibacy of a priesthood or brotherhood or sisterhood of religious persons is contrary to the obvious tendency of life, and is a serious biological blunder. Below the stage of man, throughout all the plant and animal kingdoms, this omnipresent reproductive instinct, supplemented by the later mating instinct, is exercised without conscious volition. In man, the instincts are still present, but the conscious will has taken hold of the reins, and guides toward the consummation desired. These instincts are essential to life and its continuity; they are normal, clean, universal. They are not shameful things, but splendid things. The shame lies in man’s mis-vision of them as things vile; the splendor lies in their conscious and intelligent voluntary use.