Section II CHILDREN (continued 2)

We have much less need to be afraid of the future for the rebellious, even the unkind and ungrateful child, than for the good and devoted child who apparently knows no will but ours, and lives in outward perfect submission. Every parent who is wise will recognise such a state as one of the greatest danger, and at any cost to herself will separate herself from the child. Mind, I do not mean send the child away. That plan may, indeed, be tried, but often, especially with sensitive children, the absence will but forge the fetters firmer. Something like this happens whenever a child who goes to school, is continuously homesick and becomes ill, not necessarily with a specified illness, but grows nervous, fails in work and in play. Such a mother has before her, perhaps the hardest task in parenthood. She has to take the child home and dissipate and send from herself the over-tender love, accepting in its place the rebellious hatred that it covers. Does she fail in this task of sacrifice, made necessary, remember, by some early mistake in the management of the child, she is simply using up for herself the energy of love, which her child ought to have to use for its own life.

I trust these two cases will have made plainer to you the kind of difficult problems that have to be met by parents. I do not think there is any family where they are not present. There are many variations, and the strength of the difficulty as well as the permanent nature of the harm suffered by the child, depends almost wholly on the wisdom and the knowledge of the mother, and, even more, on the extent to which she has been able to understand her concealed wishes and her own love-history from her childhood’s days and free herself from its heritage. You will see, I think, without my waiting to point out how complex the position is, and how hard is the task of the mother to guide the early emotional life of her children. It is obvious how easily mistakes may be made.

Hardly less difficult is the position of the father, who is at once the intruder in the family and the supporter of it. To the child, in the ordinary home, he is the final authority. He occupies the position of a god or a ruler. He is feared and rebelled against, also he is reverenced. Any omission of these qualities, and especially the last, is fatal to the child. Without this father reverence, and in absence of his needed authority, there arises an arrogant disposition that controls all the later character. As has been recognised by all modern psychologists, there is much of the childish attitude of the boy to his father in the later relations of the follower to his ruler, of the worshipper to his god, of the schoolboy to his school-master.

Every boy looks forward to the day when he can escape the rule of the father and himself usurp his power. I think you will find here the secret spring of all later rebellion against authority, either in the boy or in the man. I must give another warning. Again, it is when these childish feelings of rebellion, jealousy and hate are hidden, and work in the child’s soul without his knowledge, that the greatest harm is done.

In this connection, I may recount the case of a boy who grew out of babyhood shewing unusual affection for his step-father. He was also too much attached to his mother—being in that most unfortunate position of an only and too-much-considered child—and in consequence suffered from strongly jealous feelings towards the step-father. In this way a conflict was aroused between love and hate, and serious nervous symptoms arose. The origin of the trouble was first discovered at about ten years, when the boy developed a very passionate hatred against God. He was overheard one day swearing on his toy sword to devote his life to killing God. As he had not been brought up in an over-religious home, and had hardly ever been taken to Church, this vehement hatred, which continued for some time, was noticed as unusual. Now the specialist consulted about the nervous symptoms at once found in this God-hatred a projection of the very common boyish hatred to the father. The parents learnt that this was a sign of health, an effort the boy was making to rid himself of an unbearable inward trouble.

I would emphasise the necessity of parents having the right knowledge and the love that will enable them to recognise what is important in the development of character. Too little attention is given by parents to the spontaneous utterances of children: it is these that will give the clue to what is troubling the child. Questions never get direct and real answers. It is what the child brings out unconsciously that should be noted; his wishes hidden, as a rule, under some symbol, that the parent unaided, may find very difficult to interpret. We are too apt—and in this mothers are the worst sinners—to consider their children as unthinking beings. Always, I believe, children know more than we credit to them. This is true, in particular, of all emotional states. As I have tried to make plain, it is these emotions acting and interacting in connection with the home relations which are of lasting importance. Mothers who even in the nursery overforce the emotional growth of their little ones, with the unceasing demands of an over-demonstrative and unhealthy tenderness; fathers, who, themselves too arrogant for power, allow their boys and girls no independent possession of their own lives—such parents are the destroyers of their children. Their thoughtlessness and ignorance create problems that are tragedies of pain to children, and leave them marred, and often maimed, for their conflict with life.

I am prepared for an objection. You may some of you be thinking that this picture I have drawn for you of nursery tragedies is coloured from my imagination and without sufficient relation to truth. “Little children,” you may be saying, “cannot feel these devastating adult passions. You are projecting on to them evils created by your own diseased mind.” And you turn back to your “angel innocence” belief, which must be true, at any rate, you are convinced in the case of your own child.

But may I tell you this: you must not come to these problems of the child with an already fixed conviction that they do not exist; because this may well be, not because they are not there—active even in your own nursery—but because you shut your eyes determined not to see them. You think this about their not being present, because you want to think it, not because it is true. Also it is very easy even for the wisest parent to be led astray; for the child is the most accomplished actor, and is always hiding its real self from you.

You see the child has truly a very hard part to play, a part it can lay down only when no grown-ups are by. In surroundings very opposed to its own desires or its primitive needs, while still a savage in emotions, it has to pretend to be what you think it is, to do what you think it ought to do, and like what you think it ought to like. It has filled me often with wonder and admiration to see the really brilliant way in which even the youngest children play up to the angel-role forced upon them by grown-ups. Much naughtiness and many violent unexplained tempers are really a breakdown in this part. The right cue is forgotten at the right moment, or the correct entrance is missed. And I feel it very necessary to emphasise to you that the naughty child is not so much being naughty as being himself. He rushes at you with a knife, not because he is in a temper, but rather the temper is the liberating key which allows his real desire to kill you to break through the barricade of civilised desires that you are building around him. And it is very necessary for the grown-up to understand the intense satisfaction of creative strength which the child gains by this breaking out of his real self—a satisfaction that is greatly marred, it is true, and even turned to pain, by the consciousness of knowing he has broken adult rules of behaviour, been a naughty boy and grieved you. Always there is this conflict going on between his primitive egocentric desires and the demands of the adult world in which he has to learn to live. It is this conflict, and his success and failure in it, which determines his growth. More and more he has to learn to give up his own desires and subordinate his own will. Yet, I am not sure if his repentence, when he fails, is altogether good for him. Certainly, if it is excessive, and if it occurs too frequently, it weakens the force of life. And it is most urgent of all to remember that the parent, or nurse, or teacher, by constantly requiring from the uncivilised child the standard of conduct right for the civilised adult may, and most frequently does, produce a strain which turns the creative force of life back upon itself. It is ever thus in life when we draw back too hastily or too much coerced, from any spontaneous expression of emotion; the energy gathered for the direct expression flows back impotent. I believe that many a creative artist is destroyed in the civilising process of the child being turned into the good boy or girl.

And this brings me to a question of the most urgent importance to all parents and teachers who attempt to guide the emotional development of a child; to go slowly, and never to force an outward practice of virtue from the child, if that particular stage of virtue has not been reached. We do not expect the child to read until it has learnt to read, nor to calculate and work sums before it understands the use of figures; we do not expect it to walk until it has stumbled and fallen many times, nor to use its tiny hands with precision until it has broken many objects. Why then should we expect it to be good without learning to be good? And especially, I ask, why should we demand a standard of emotional behaviour much in advance of anything to which we ourselves have attained?

For in truth every child has a twisted and most difficult path to travel in order to reach the standard of conduct expected by the adult world. Few parents realise at all the harm that so readily may be done, from any over-hastening on the road to virtue, to the child, sensitive, responsive to every suggestion, most liable to injury; who is always balanced between the desire to be a dirty, little savage, like himself, or a clean well-behaved person, like a grown-up. For what gives every adult so tremendous a hold over the child is his never ceasing desire to push forward to a stage above what he is at. Always he is pulled in two directions, forward to effort and good conduct and the real world of action and of grown-ups, and backward towards ease and self-pleasing and the dream-world of the child, in which he thinks only of what he wants himself. If we hurry him too much there will be a regression: the uncivilised trait that has not been got rid of by experience of its uselessness and voluntarily been cast aside, will be thrust down deep into the psyche, where its unrealised power sends up primitive and uncivilised wishes, which will certainly mar the adult life, even if they do not wreck it.

It is not from sheer “contrariness” or “nastiness” that children develop “bad habits,” that they pick noses, bite nails, stammer, and other much worse things, or later are too shy or too boisterously self-assertive, or develop illness and morbid fears.3 Such symptoms may be replacements of infantile curiosities and interests which were denied their satisfaction by the mother’s warning, often harmful, however gently given, “that is not nice, darling.” In particular harm is caused by a too early checking of the child’s delight in messy things, making mud pies, playing with water, using hands instead of knife and fork, and other nasty messy habits. The particular habit may, and usually does, disappear, but the checked and thwarted energy is still potent and at any time in after life may re-appear clothed in a fresh dress of concealment.

All that can be done with the bad habit is to turn it into new directions of rightful energy. As, for instance, the messy child should be given heaps of plasticine or wax, and sand to play with. Similarly with the desire to play with water: this is a symbolic action by which the young child frees itself from some inner hidden trouble. I know of one case where a child until quite an advanced age, always after a relapse into bad and primitive behaviour, had a curious way of blowing water through long tubes. The result was highly satisfactory and never failed to bring the child back to good and social behaviour. As an example of the terrible harm that may be done by an over fastidious niceness of behaviour, I may cite a rather curious case I happen to know, where a mother, was so afraid of nakedness, and disliking the sight of her own body, that she actually put on a bathing dress when she had a bath even in the privacy of her own bath room. This mother had a son whose adult life was rendered miserable and his happiness to a great extent injured, by horrible and haunting obscene visions. Here, in very truth, the cleanness of the mother became the uncleanness of the son.

I must hasten on. I am bound to leave out much that might well be noticed, for the subject is very difficult and very wide. I hope, however, I have made clear to you the following truths:—

(1) That any education of children in sex that is to result in success in the after life cannot be fulfilled by the imparting of set and fixed lessons on sex-enlightenment, given either in the home or in the school. (2) That this education is concerned with the entire emotional life of the child. (3) That it is continuous and unceasing. (4) And that it is a work of such complexity that for even the wisest mistakes are certain and success uncertain.

Above all else, I am sure we have to avoid an easy and lazy optimism.

And with such perils awaiting the incautious, is it any wonder that the chief element of safety often is a negative one—non-interference? By non-interference the two chief factors leading to emotional disturbance and ill-health may almost certainly be avoided; thwarted wishes are not thrust back, and repressed to work harm in the psyche, causing mental and bodily ill-health which often does not manifest itself for many years; development is not hurried on too rapidly, so that necessary primitive stages of growth are omitted or hastened over too quickly, causing, not infrequently, in the later years of life, a regression backwards to primitive and uncivilised conduct.

When interference becomes necessary it must be given wisely and with due understanding of the child’s position. I mean it must be the right instruction for the special child at that stage of its growth—not at all what the adult thinks it ought to be taught or would like to teach it. There can be no fixed rules as to sex teaching; no maxims laid down that can safely be always followed.

Take, for instance, the one apparently simple matter of satisfying the child’s certain and right curiosity at the different stages of its growth, by telling it the facts of birth, and, as it grows older, explaining the difficulties that most certainly will arise in the mind of every boy and girl in regard to these questions. So far I have said little about this matter because most people say much; holding it as the one thing implied by sex education, whereas I regard it, as I have tried to make plain, as a limited, though certainly important duty in connection with that education, which should be fulfilled by parents, and within certain limitations, by teachers in the schools.

But here, again, I am bound to utter warnings. There must be no over-forcing of knowledge not sought for by the child, this is at least as injurious to the emotional growth as over-forcing is to the intellectual growth. Any one who has read Jung’s account of his analysis of little Anna, will know what I mean. Little Anna became troubled and nervous, worried about the birth of a little brother or sister (I forget which). Telling her the truth did not help her, and it took Professor Jung many months of patient work with the child to get to the bottom of exactly what was troubling her. The most urgent rule for the mother in this matter is this: never to arouse sexual curiosity but to watch for its spontaneous expression and always satisfy it when it is present. This of course is the same as saying, always tell the child all the truth it wants to know. The difficulty here, of course, is that so rarely is the child able to ask for the knowledge he (or she) wants.

What above all else it is necessary is for the mother to watch for the child’s unconscious betrayal of its own curiosity. I mean by this, that some unconsidered remark or act is the surest hope of finding just what part of the problem is troubling him (or her) at that time; in almost all cases there is a personal element of jealousy, unknown to the child or carefully hidden, which is directed against one or other parent, usually the father, or against some brother or sister. This is why the intellectual teaching of the facts of birth, though necessary, does not help very much and often disastrously fails.

As I am trying all the time to force upon you, the real sex education is an emotional education, that is why it is so difficult. I may make this plainer by means of an illustration which I give in my book on “Sex Education and National Health.” It was told me by a very wise mother of her way of dealing with her son, who was, I think, about fourteen years old. This son showed he was thinking, and was evidently worried, about the very small families of one or at the most two children, or the childless marriages, common among his mother’s friends. He did not, however, speak of his trouble directly; instead he beat round the question, somewhat in the manner of a shying horse. After this had gone on for some time, he one day asked his mother if her friends were more delicate (meaning, of course, more refined) than other people. His mother was aware of what was troubling him; she knew what he really wanted to know was whether married people lived in celibacy when they had not children. She wisely told him the plain facts and for him at that time curiosity was quieted.

A boy of nine had a dream which he told his parents. His mother was in a shop, and a man on a bicycle, dressed as an officer came along the road; he, the little boy, rushed to the bicycle, stopped it, flung the man off, and killed him. In telling the dream the boy said, “I prevented him getting to mother.” This dream is so clear that I need not wait to interpret it beyond saying that the father of the boy was an officer. It will cause no surprise to anyone, with even a rudimentary knowledge of the emotional troubles of children, to know that this boy developed serious nervous symptoms.

It has seemed worth while to record these two instructive little stories, as a means of illustrating the kind of incident which furnishes the guide with regard to the nature of the trouble to be looked for, and shows in the first case as well the kind of help a watchful and instructed parent can give to relieve the trouble prevailing in the minds of the young. Dreams should always be noted, they throw the sharpest light on the child’s emotional conflicts. I must again urge the necessity of the parent paying the closest attention to the child’s prattle, to watching carefully his games and his behaviour, for in this way only can the clue be found to make it possible to give the kind of instruction or treatment that is wanted. I may give a few instances. Such things as the frequent childish desire to sit up with father and mother, the calling for the mother at night under the plea of fear are very certain signs of active jealousy. Again the very usual unwillingness of the child to grow up arises out of the inability to meet the necessity of separating the self from the protective tenderness of the mother. The child is always tending to turn back to safety, and, if this is encouraged by the mother, the child in after life will be unable to meet the necessities of adult action. The too fond mother perpetuates the childhood of her son or her daughter.

What the parents can do is to watch the child, and to learn themselves, in order to have the knowledge to clear up difficulties as these appear, and then it may be possible to remove obstructions to growth. Further, they can place within the child’s reach the materials—the sand and clean messy things to play with—machines to pull to pieces, swords to fight with, dolls to play with—every child will need different materials, by which, to a certain extent, liberation can be found from their primitive instincts, by giving them a free and harmless expression. In fact the real work of the parent may be likened to that of the stage scene-shifter and property manager.

Parental power guides the early years of the child like a higher controlling fate. But when the boy or girl begins to grow up there begins also the conflict between the home attachments and the need to break away in order to free the growing soul from the spell of the family. It is the war between the generations. The frequent and often very deep depression of puberty arises from this struggle. And there are the many other, and often very disturbing, symptoms, which are rooted in the difficulty of the new adjustments. The boy or girl tries often to separate himself (or herself) as much as possible from his family; he (or she) may even estrange themselves from their parents but inwardly this only binds them more firmly to the family ties. The outward break must be regarded as a dangerous sign of the inner conflict which the unselfish wisdom of the parents ought to be able to aid.

I cannot follow this important matter further. But I would wish to say that this is the time for the teacher to step forward and take up the work begun by the parent. The parents at this period are often hindrances to the child, they must push their children away from them in order to help the growing souls to gain their liberation.

The uncertain and, as I fear they may seem, unsatisfactory conclusions that must result from any honest inquiry into this difficult question of helping the young at the start of their life’s journey, is due in part to the fact that, even yet, and in spite of all the new knowledge that has been gained in the last few years, we know very little about the child’s emotional processes. Unfortunately our knowledge is not sufficient to make it possible for any dogmatic statements to be placed even tentatively before parents. There can be no ready-made prescriptions, no certain cures. We do not even know where the greatest trouble lies, whether it is in the parents and the teachers—the adults who fail to understand the child; or in the child, who fights away from the understanding that those who love and train him are able to offer. We do know, however, that the difficulties on the part of the child are very great—much greater than most of us (whether we are parents or teachers)—satisfied in an easy grown-up optimism, have cared to realise. In many ways we—the adults—the parents and the teachers, we who are a generation behind the children and already have been through the long, struggling, upward journey, by which they are now travelling, ought to manage our love and our training for them more carefully, more sympathetically, and more intelligently. I say intelligently, because the sins committed in love against children are more lastingly harmful than many of the sins committed under neglect or even under unkindness.

Thus, the final word I have to say to parents in regard to their children is this:

Do not love your children too possessively.

Try to understand and respect them—realise their existence as individuals with interests and needs apart from yourself. If necessary send them from you. Do not love your children for your own satisfaction, but for their good, and to help them to establish, with as little disaster as possible, their own lives.

SEX INSTRUCTION THE AGE AT WHICH KNOWLEDGE SHOULD BE GIVEN

A story is recorded of a father and mother in ancient Greece, who, being concerned for the welfare of their only son, went to a renowned teacher and asked him to educate and take full charge of their child. “How old is your son?” questioned the teacher.

“Just three!”

The sage shook his head. “I am sorry but you have come to me too late: the boy’s character is decided already.”

I was reminded of this most instructive story as I read the account of the evidence given by the Rev. the Hon. Ed. Lyttelton, before the Birth Rate Commission of the National Council of Public Morals. For while I agree wholeheartedly with the late headmaster of Eton College as to the necessity of instructing the young in the facts of sex, I disagree, with his view as to the method of the teaching and, even more I disagree emphatically, as to the age at which instruction should begin.

Dr. Lyttelton holds that the first lessons should be given at the age of nine years, when the boy ought to be taught the facts of maternity, this knowledge to be supplemented by further teaching at the age of twelve or thirteen explaining the even more important (for the boy) facts of paternity.

Now it is here that I venture to disagree, and think that Dr. Lyttelton has fallen into the very common error of underestimating the child’s intelligence and boundless curiosity. It is in the very early nursery days that sex education is most urgently needed. To wait until the age of nine years has been reached is often to wait too late. In a vast number of cases, it is locking the stable door after the horse has been stolen.

In all children the activity of the intelligence begins to work at a very early age, and parents, who are not willfully blind, must know that this activity tends to manifest itself in an inquisitive desire to know many elementary facts of life, which are dependent upon sex. The primary and most universal of these desires is the desire to know where “the new baby comes from.” A child of four or even younger, may begin to ask questions on this matter quite simply and spontaneously. The degree of curiosity, as also the frankness with which it is expressed, will differ, of course, in different children, but I am certain this curiosity is present and at times active in all children. If they do not question their elders, they will certainly puzzle over the matter themselves; often they will talk with older companions, and gain the information they are seeking in the worst possible way.

Thus the first teacher of the child must be the mother, the one who is most constantly with the child, tending him in washing, undressing, and in all the daily needs of his little body. It is the mother who ought to be the child’s supreme trainer.

Few of us understand the confusion and hurt that may be caused by a mother’s stupid silence and even more stupid hints and evasions and made-up fables. The false stories of babies brought by the doctor or the stork, or a little sister or brother found under the gooseberry bush are never believed. While the fantastic ideas of birth, that the child makes up for himself, fix their untruth into the immature minds. And afterwards they cannot be checked, owing to childish concealments, which always spring up so rapidly to meet any expression of adult reticence. These birth-fantasies, though the child seems to out-grow them, are not really forgotten but remain active in the unconscious mind. In this way, trouble is often started that will be determinative of the gravest evils in the later adult life.

Parents are greatly to blame for not answering the questions of their children, and being blind to their natural curiosity. And I would emphasise again that this curiosity is present even when no questions are asked. There need be no spoken words to make the child feel that its questions are discouraged. All adults are surprisingly ignorant of the affectability of children—their quick response to every kind of influence.

In the case of the birth of another child—an usurper who takes the older child’s place—this affectability is exceedingly acute on account of the emotional disturbance, in excitement and possible jealousy. And by means of the adult attitude, the very certain interest and investigation of the child into what is happening may so easily become confused and connected with what is shameful and wrong; and the trouble is aided, and usually in the worst possible manner, by the sharpest observations and deductions made by the child from unconsidered actions and overheard remarks of parents, and of servants and other adults—none of whom have any idea of the child’s watchfulness or his curiosity in this matter.

We think little children are not interested in birth because we do not want them to be interested. And they, with the almost uncanny sagacity which children show, understand this desire only too well and too quickly.

I had a striking illustration of this curious adult blindness quite recently. Two mothers, who were sisters, were pregnant at the same time. Each mother told me privately that her children were not interested in the event or in any way curious, but that her sister’s children were curious and wanting to find out what was happening. It would have been useless to tell these mothers the truth. Yet both of them were intelligent. They believed that their own children had no curiosity because they wished to believe this, not because it was true.

Thwarted curiosity is one of the most frequent causes of emotional disturbance in the first years of life. Do we not all know children who as they get older exhibit an unreasoning curiosity about everything, opening drawers, looking into the envelopes of other people’s letters, searching excitedly for what they do not want. We want to ask the question: Why does the child do this? What is it that urges him to act like a “Peeping Tom?” For he is urged. You will find this habit of needless prying almost impossible to check. It may persist into adult life. Do not we all know grown-ups who cannot refrain from prying, always curious, they are, on all occasions, seeking for knowledge they do not want.

This seeking action is symbolic. It implies that the search for the thing that is not wanted, the curiosity over something of no interest at all, is a substitute action for something that at one time was wanted—something about which knowledge was desired, and desired so much that it would not be denied. It was a curiosity so real that the thwarting of it has started emotional trouble of which these searching acts and persisting curiosity are the symbol or sign.

This substitute formation is one of the commonest emotional processes in children. The child pries, open drawers and letters, collects useless objects, aimlessly searches for knowledge he does not want because there is some knowledge he wants tremendously badly, but cannot speak about. That is why he persists in his habits of peeping and prying in spite of your scoldings and punishments. He must persist, unless you deaden his character so terribly by your ill-judged repression that even this substitute relief is closed. Your child will then, probably, find some other make-believe comfort; he will bite his nails, pick his nose, or other much worse habits may begin, or again the emotional disturbance may be so acute that it becomes impossible for the child to face, so that he fails in achieving any kind of symbolic replacement. The thwarted and emotionally over-charged curiosity is thrust back into the psyche where it remains a cause of ill-health of body and uncleanness of mind, until that time in the adult years, when the harvest of tares is reaped from the bad seed that has been sown.

The parents have the greatest responsibility, as I have said already. A child of four or even younger may begin to ask questions of its mother, simply and spontaneously. It is the child who must guide the parent. But again I would give warning. The mother must not be over-eager, or she will fall easily into the error of stimulating instead of quieting the child’s restless inquiring mind. The child at the age when such questions will first be asked and should be answered, will very quickly tire of any information that may be given to it. It will break off to run away and play and will interrupt the most beautiful and carefully prepared lessons. And if the mother is wise she will never go beyond the interest of the child, or the satisfying and nothing further, of the special curiosity which at that special time is occupying the child. If this course is pursued the child will probably continue to ask for information—though there can be no certainty that this desirable result will follow. But where such opportunities arise the right kind of sex instruction can be attempted. For the mother will be able to give answers in natural conversation, which will not force information not sought for by the child. When so treated, it will be found that children are not over-burdened by the subject, they will interrupt and break away from the answer to the question they have asked to speak about toy soldiers or dolls. This, to me, is the immense value of this form of teaching: the child has the information, and yet does not trouble about it when it is not to the point. Such a result can never be gained by means of set talks or fixed lessons, especially if these are mixed up with warnings, and much vague talk of things that the child neither cares for or understands.

I should, however, be giving a wrong impression if I left the matter here, so that this answering of children’s questions seemed to be a simple matter. It is not simple. For each child, as for each adult the problems of sex are personal problems. And the child whose problem is the hardest—who most urgently needs help, will hardly ever ask questions. Instruction in sex is not and never can be like teaching the child about other things. That is what so many of the modern advocates of sex education so entirely forget.

In every child, as I have tried to show you there are hidden conflicts of jealousy, of love, of hate, which determine beforehand its response to the teaching that is given by the parents.

I cannot here treat at all adequately this difficult question; it is one on which I have written elsewhere (Mother and Son, Sex Education and National Health, The Mind of the Naughty Child) I can say only what I have emphasised already that from the start to the end, sex education is an emotional education. That, of course, is why it is so difficult.

There is, in my opinion, too firm a belief in the efficacy of formal instruction. The way is not so easy as this to discharge our debt to the young. And sometimes I fear that parental talks about sex, in particular when such talks are delayed until the boy or the girl is reaching puberty, or until the time when the dangers of school life have to be met, involving, as it must, a sudden breaking through of the silence of years, may work for harm instead of for good. That this is so in the case of some boys and girls I know to be true. You see you cannot grow flowers in a soil choked already with weeds.

THE MYTH OF THE VIRTUOUS SEX

A day or two ago I was passing one of the great London schools at the afternoon hour when the boys were released. I write “boys,” but among them were many of sixteen, seventeen, or even eighteen years who looked almost men.

On the street side, two flappers, quite young—not more, I should judge, than fifteen, stood with their faces pressed between the iron rails and watched the exit of the boys. Certainly they were not nice girls; they invited with smiles, they giggled, they ogled, they gestured. There could, I think, be no mistake as to the purpose of the girls.

I am glad to record that no single boy took the slightest notice of them.

Now this very unpleasant incident has set me thinking. I am oppressed with feelings of responsibility; yes—and also of shame. If I am to be honest I must accept here, as in all relations between the two sexes, the validity of the mans’ plea that rings—yes, and will continue to ring—through the centuries: “The woman tempted me!”

Now, though we may accept this responsibility in theory, most often we repudiate it in practice. From time to time—and the intervals are not long apart—efforts are made to pass new laws which are supported by many virtuous people—laws, whose one purpose is to increase the punishments of men for offences against young girls.

I am in whole-hearted sympathy with any changes in our law that will afford greater protection to young girls. I cannot, however, refuse to see the reverse side of the question. It is proposed to raise the age of consent for girls, while at the same time a woman is not to be held responsible for seducing a boy who is much younger than herself. This is unjust.

Why should we afford a period of protection longer for the girl than for the boy?

It may, of course, be argued that the boy is better able to look after himself. This is not true.

The girl grows up more quickly always than the boy; emotionally she is far more developed, and, therefore, should be more, and not less, responsible than he is. I have no doubt about this at all.

No boy knows very much about love until some girl or woman has taught him.

Of course, the view of the evil nature of men, and of women as always the victim, is one that can hardly fail to be pleasing to women, depending, as it does, on their moral superiority, which stamps them as Amazons of Purity, on the glorious mountain heights of virtue, from where they must send down climbing ropes and ladders, in the form of prohibitions and regulations and new laws, to pull men up out of the deep valleys of vice.

But if we inquire more honestly into this question of men’s sins, we shall find that it is not they who are wholly responsible. There is little difference between men’s virtue and women’s virtue.

Almost unceasingly in our streets women are tempting men.

Always there is the invitation near: “Come and make love to me.” To be provocative is the one simple rule of many women’s lives. Men’s admiration is a necessity to their very existence.

True, in the after results, the woman may be, and, indeed, often is, the victim—has to pay the heavier price; but at the start she is the leader of the assault.

The essential fact in every relationship of the sexes is the woman’s power over the man, and it is the misuse of this power that is the beginning of sin.

Do not think I am unfair. Most men, I know, are not only tolerant of women’s wiles; they like them. But most men succumb, I believe, against their will, and often against their inclination, to the tyranny of their own aroused passions.

Men’s chivalry, as well as their pride, has woven a cloak of silence on this question of the temptation they are so frequently called upon to resist and this silence has protected women—even the worst.

Let us alter our laws to help girls by all means. Yet, let us be just. There is such a thing as too much temptation for a boy—temptation that a woman has no right to give.

SENTIMENTAL TAMPERING WITH DIFFICULT PROBLEMS: WITH SOME REMARKS ON SEX FAVOURITISM

It is sometimes difficult to have patience with the proposals that are brought forward, so frequently and with such persistent zeal, to amend our Criminal Law. One cannot doubt the sincerity of these efforts to improve our disordered moral conditions. But something more than good-will is required. There is such a thing as over-haste in righteousness.

Besides, the attitude taken by these scavengers of conduct is almost always sentimental and one-sided. It is also dishonest. I say so, because almost without exception, they fail entirely to meet the true facts of the evils they attempt to cure. As reformers they seem to have but one idea; if they have more, they keep them secret, for they agitate but for one object.

Morality is a word that has been wrested from its true meaning of the whole duty of man in his social character and limited to the one narrow application of sexual conduct. It is curious and significant. It is as if we transferred to others some judgment which unconsciously was imposed from within.

Yet obviously the strongest impediment against effective reform lies just here—in this blindness to reality; this separation from the truth. I need not wait to enlarge upon this further, it is impossible to contradict. To judge blindly is to judge upon a lie.

Would you ask me to give you examples?

There is, to take one illuminative instance, the long continued and still unsettled agitation for raising the age of consent for girls. Those who are chiefly eager for this reform invariably evince frenzied zeal, combined with the most curious and deplorable ignorance of the real facts. I cannot for a moment believe that they are in the least degree, consciously blind. But that does not alter the fact that they are blind. Instead of facing the situation squarely with knowledge and due consideration of all the complicated conditions, they ignore every thing they do not want to see. They wallow in sex-righteousness.

Consider again the controversy that raged now sometime back, with regard to the White Slave Traffic. The sudden frenzy. The unproved stories of the trapping of girls! The clamour for legislative measures! Every moral reformer became obsessed.

The instinctive attitude of the one-ideaed reformer had a unique chance of displaying itself, and one marvelled at the almost curious enthusiasm, mated to inexperience, with which the subject was approached. While the most offensive feature of the agitation was the sex-obsession, which gave rise to the silly notion of the helpless perfection of women and the dangerous opposite view of the indescribable imperfections of men. It is no exaggeration to say that every sense of reality was lost in white clouds of virtue.

I would wish to make it plain that I am not judging these questions either on one side or the other. What I desire to show is the danger of a prejudiced view. And the danger is particularly active in connection with all these attempts at changing the law, in order to give greater protection to women and girls, while, at the same time, boys are left unprotected.

This unpopular view of the need to protect the boy from the girl—the man from woman—the temptress of man—is not usually brought forward. Yet, it is a view of the situation, seen from a different side, that cannot be neglected. The evidence is overwhelming of girls of sixteen years and even younger tempting boys of the same age as well as those older than themselves. If in such cases the boy is to be punished and the girl treated as a wronged and helpless victim, not only will a great unjustice be done, but there will be a very certain danger of graver demoralisations.

This truth of the woman’s power, which depends upon Nature and not upon law, the supporters of a one-sided alteration of our criminal law too often fail to face.

I am reminded here of a little incident that happened many years ago. I had quarrelled seriously with a man, who before I had always liked and respected, for what I then considered was his light treatment of a certain girl who was my friend. She had written and told me her side of this occurrence.

Very well I recall what he said: “You don’t understand. She asked for it.” Then, when I pressed him further, he went on. “A man always treats a girl in the way she wants him to do.”

Now, one of the greatest troubles in connection with all sex-legislation to-day arises from this fact that women do not understand. They are inexperienced and in too great a hurry. They think they can cure old evils with quick penny-in-the slot reforms. There is still a chivalry that protects women and shields their ignorance. These illusions are maintained, even by men of the world, who are acquainted with all the complex difficulties. It is the romantic view, a kind of male blindness that nothing seems to cure. Women must be protected from men, who are the great offenders in all sexual sins. Often I have marvelled at the acceptance by men of a view of the sex-conflict so highly untrue, though flattering to women, depending as it does on their entirely unproved moral superiority.

And here I wish to ask your attention to a consideration of the question that is very rarely appreciated. I regard it as exceedingly important. Those who are possessed with a frenzy for protecting girls ought to remember that there is still greater necessity to protect boys. It is forgotten that the young girl is not usually in constant close relations with other men than her father and brothers. She has to be guarded only from the outside lover, whom in the first beginning of intimacy she could, if she wished, easily repel.

The reverse is the case with boys. In a sense, they cannot escape from situations of danger. At school, in lodgings, even at home, in sickness and also in health; on every occasion opportunities are provided that make abuse exceedingly easy. The part played in the sexual initiation of boys by servants, by lodging and boarding-house keepers, and by other women who have to tend, and feed and mend for them is much larger than is credited. It is folly to close our eyes to the evils that so often arise. Probably every man who is a seducer of women was himself first seduced by a woman.

In spite of the emancipation upon which women pride themselves, in spite of much theoretical knowledge, yes, in spite of social and rescue work—where, it should be noted, they hear the woman’s story but only in the rarest cases the man’s story—almost all women lead a shielded life. Much that happens is outside their experience—as long as they are virtuous. This sets definite limits to their knowledge and their power of comprehension. And this again explains the continued belief in the woman’s notion that, in all cases, the girl is the victim of the man.

It would be nearer the truth to reverse the position. Girls need to be taught their great and unavoidable responsibility. They should be trained to be protectors rather than to seek protection. Men will treat them as they want to be treated.

Let us now, for a moment, be practical and consider if there is any reason we can discover, which will explain why we hear so much more about the seduction of girls and the sins of men than we ever do about the other side—the tempting by women and girls, and the seduction of boys. The answer is simple. The boy will not talk about what happens to him if he is led into a sexual offence at an early age. This is true also to a large extent of the man. But the boy especially considers he ought to have known: also he is much more self-conscious. Then he expects to be blamed for not resisting, whatever the circumstances. He will probably not tell anyone, unless the girl does so, until years afterwards.

I know a schoolboy who was seduced by a woman relation years older than himself, in a very shameful way. This boy was of high character and very sensitive; he suffered in ways impossible to relate here, but he never told anyone until about ten years afterwards, when he told the woman he was to marry.

Now, if this case had been reversed and a young schoolgirl had been the victim of a male relative, I am fairly confident the fact would not have been concealed. Girls, even if not wholly innocent, almost always will tell, because it has at all times been allowed to them to blame the man. They thus can count on sympathy. This means much more than usually is reckoned with.

Let me give a less tragic instance of a different and humourous character. A schoolboy, about seventeen years old, was waiting for a motor-bus in which he was going home. He was a dreamy boy and a bus came up and, lost in his thoughts, he did not take it. He was brought back to reality by a girl accosting him. “I waited, too,” she said. “You, are glad arn’t you? You would like me to go in the bus with you.”

She smiled up at him: but he was not to be caught.

“I don’t care, the hell, what you do as long as you don’t expect me to pay your fare!”

That silenced her and sent her away. But how easily, had the boy been a less confident type, the incident might have taken a different course. And then, if disaster had followed, the boy would be blamed, the girl would be pitied. There is an enormous amount of sex unfairness.

I could recount many further cases in proof of how almost always it is the girl (or the woman) who takes the first steps in forming these friendships. Men, at least, will know that I speak the truth. And yet this fiction of the greater virtue of the woman is persistently maintained: while the man is condemned as being nearer the devil and the beast.

I know that the many horrible cases of criminal assault upon children will be quoted against me, in proof of the justice of this heavy condemnation of men. Please do not think that I am in any way unaware of the awfulness of these crimes. The protection of little children is the one matter on which I feel most deeply. But there can be no fair comparison between this class of crime and the ordinary cases of seduction, whether we believe it is the man who seduces the woman, or the other way round, the woman who tempts and excites the boy or the man. In the one case an unhappy and terrible degenerate is passion-driven into the commission of an atrocity, in the other there is, and, indeed, must be to some extent, a mutual purpose, usually with some calculation and a certain deliberate choice.

That is why it is so false to reality to regard the one partner as a helpless victim. It is really a position that is impossible and ridiculous. Are we to believe that all women are impotent and imbecile weaklings incapable of resisting men? The truth is that in slandering men we only slander women with the backward swing of the same blow.

THE SEDUCTION OF MEN

Quite recently an action has been brought in the High Courts by a wife against a woman for the seduction of her husband. It is the first time a charge of this kind has been heard in an English court of law, though, I believe, such actions are not unknown in the newer lands of America and Canada.

The case is one of very special interest, and opens up many questions that go right down to the deepest problems of the relationships of men and women.

As we should expect, the action failed. It was held that the man had not been seduced. He was not enticed away from his wife by “the other woman,” rather, it was the other way round. The man, not the woman, must be held responsible; she had yielded to him only at his desire, after persuasion and against her will.

But is this true?

As already in the two previous essays I have emphasised, perhaps over-emphasised, the accepted, very sentimental and peculiar judgment in all these cases. The woman the victim: the man the seducer. He the active sinner: she the passive sufferer. All the blame to be heaped on to him: all the pity to be given to her.

Really it is difficult, as so frequently I have stated, to have patience at this shelving of the real facts. It seems to be forgotten entirely how tremendous is the power of the woman in all love relationships. Why a man under the influence of a woman he loves is as easily led and as devoid of all will-power as a young child. Indeed, he becomes the child of the woman, as soon as, and for as long as, he loves her. He is her’s to make or to destroy. She strengthens him enormously or irreparably injures and weakens his resistance. She can hold him to the hardest duty and keep him in the fine path of right doing. It is she leads him, not he who leads her, into the easier ways of love.

Yes, it is women who shape the souls of men as it is women who gave them birth.

That is why this view of the man’s responsibility in love being greater than the woman’s is so singularly untrue. If we inquire at all truthfully into this question of seduction, it is obvious that not the man but the woman is the more responsible. For one thing, she knows so much more about love, from the beginning, and without being taught, than a man ever knows. Most often it is the woman who takes the first step, breaks down the first barrier. Always there is the invitation which unceasingly she gives, whether consciously or unconsciously expressed—“Come and love me.”

Her dress, her movements—all invite love. To be provocative is however, little she knows it, the one fixed simple rule of her life. In the end, and indeed, sometimes very soon the position may be reversed, but at the start assuredly the woman holds the cards and can make the first move in the love-game. She is the pursuer, far more often and far more truly, than the pursued. Too often she directs a continuous attack.

Her relation to the man is comparable to that of a magnet to a heap of iron filings.

Love to a woman so often, when she is young, is less an affair of passion than of excitement. It gratifies her insatiable desire for power. The boy or the man more certainly is driven by love. This is his principal motive. While the girl often starts on the adventure for the sake of experiment and because she wants amusement. She pursues love almost as a game. Passion plays a part only in the second degree. Not infrequently, in the midst of love, the coldness of her heart is plainly apparent.

This may seem a hard saying. I believe it is true.

Seduction as the crime of the man alone cannot, I am convinced, be accepted, in any case without great caution. It is, as I have said several times already, so comfortable to place the sins of sex on men. But I doubt very much if any woman can be seduced against her will.

I must insist again that excitement and escape from dullness, as also the joy in receiving presents and having “a good time,” are the principal motives that first lead girls into illegal relations.

Sometimes it is worse than this.

Many women, seducers of men—women who draw men from their wives and their homes, and their duty, are nothing but cold experimentors. They are speculators in love. They do this for delight of power, in the same way as men are speculators in business.

Perhaps the position is unavoidable.

The subjection of man is a necessity to some women’s existence. Love is to them a similar feeling to love of the chase. They cannot keep from pursuing men. It is, as I have said, an expression of the ever increasing demand for excitement. Conquest in love gives to women the opportunities for the fulfilment of themselves, which men gain in many different departments of life.

But no man, I think, could satisfy completely the craving for dominion, which the delusive humility of his desire awakens in this type of woman. Then when she commits the error, from a womanly point of view, of hunting down her man; leading him on by helping him too much—seducing him, instead of waiting for him and drawing him slowly and unconsciously by her love, she awakens the same instinct for dominion and thirst for excitement in the man. It is then that the man becomes a seducer of other women. It is the lust to devour, to crush, quickened into being by suggestion. It explains, I believe, the cruelty of all wild love.

PLAYING WITH LOVE

Many girls to-day try deliberately to keep love light. Shrewd enough to understand the heavy claims of serious love affairs that lead to marriage, they prefer flirtations of weeks only—episodes that are a secret and, as it were, detachable part of their lives.

It is a dangerous state.

Emotional power and the enjoyment of the simple pleasures of life are dried up by such constant stimulation. A new diet of excitement must always be provided. The object of life is to cheat time and to crowd out boredom. Whatever is going on they must be in it from a jazz dance or river picnic to a church bazaar.

In the old days it used to be only duties for girls—now it is rights and pleasure with the demand to be left to make their own lives. There is a turning away from duty; a hatred of anything dull.

Girls as I have just shown you want love as an experience and to provide the always desired excitement. They do not want to marry and to settle down.

Thus while condescending to fascinate men, while deliberately seeking attention these young women still hold themselves in hand. Intending to exploit life to the uttermost they find love amusing, but they fight always against its being a vocation.

There is calculation and dangerous hardiness in their attitude to their lovers.

Their transitory love affairs are, indeed, regarded in very much the same way as formerly they were regarded by the average young men—as enjoyable and thrilling incidents of which they are ashamed only when they are talked about and blamed.

With no sex conscience, these wantons of excitement have no consciousness of womanly responsibility. Each new affair affords an eagerly snatched tribute to a colossal and restless vanity.

This is one type of woman who to-day plays with love.

There are as well other girls of a different character, less concerned with pleasure, less consciously vain, more emotional, and to men more interesting. They are incessantly thinking of their own personalities; and, for this reason, they are equally, even if not more, harmfully destructive in the utter misery they often create.

These are the girls who are always emotion hunting.

Impossible to tell what are their pseudo-feelings. A sort of sterile passion, which expends itself in their failure to know, and find, what they want.

They do not wish consciously to escape the responsibilities of marriage; indeed they seek unceasingly the perfect man to whom they may surrender their freedom. But they suffer from a formless discontent that rots into every love and prevents them finding satisfaction.

Consumed with haggard restlessness, such girls pass their days in a dangerous state of expectancy and nervous tiredness. Eternally they are unsatisfied without knowing why.

Born spiritual adventurers, these worshippers of emotionalism, attitudinising and thinking perpetually of themselves, desire at all cost a position in the limelight. They love romantically, but rarely are they strong enough to obey their inclinations. Such girls are out on an eternal quest; and, every now and again, they believe they have found the ideal man they are seeking. Then they discover they have not found him, so their search is taken up anew. While often their insistent egoism, which causes them to ignore the rights of others and all social obligations, drives them into dangerous corners; does not give them a chance; turns them to use mean weapons of deceit; forces them into false situations that too often close around them like a trap.

Many other nobler types, besides these two, have been playing with love.

Girls of profound and steadfast emotional nature are rare. The great majority of girls certainly are not entirely light-minded, but they are less serious, more noisily determined to do what they want, to get what they can both out of men and out of life. They are very like children, playing at desperate rebels, who take up weapons to use far more deadly than they know.

All this playing with love is detestable—all of it. It bears witness to a poverty of emotion and a shameful shirking of responsibility.

Women are the custodians of manners in love. The future rests with them. And this responsibility cannot safely be set aside, dependent as it is on forces active long before human relations were established—forces which press on women back and back through the ages.

Yes, woman has laid upon her the sacred necessity of seriousness in all that is connected with Love. It is a duty imposed upon her by Nature, and one that she cannot escape. That is why there is so much danger in these restless neurotic years, when girls are too excited to be serious.