32 PLAIN FACTS FOR OLD AND YOUNG 



be rigorously prohibited, and perhaps branded as ob- 

 scenity. The result is, that there is a great deal of 

 ignorance on these questions, and a still greater amount 

 of half knowledge, which is more dangerous than either 

 total ignorance or the fullest information. We have the 

 authority of Sir James Paget for the statement that 

 some men grow up, and even marry, in complete sexual 

 ignorance ; and that, while this is rare in the male sex, 

 it is extremely common amon^ cultivated and refined 

 women. 



"The decent veil which we conspire to throw over 

 everything concerned with the reproductive function, 

 serves, beyond doubt, some useful ends, and we trust 

 the English people will always be characterized by their 

 delicacy of thought and expression in this matter. But 

 we are convinced that this secrecy, this conspiracy of 

 silence, has gone too far, and that it is productive of 

 serious evils. We object, in the first place, to it as un- 

 natural. That our educational methods and social prac- 

 tice should permit men, or more frequently women, to 

 marry without knowing what marriage involves, is not 

 merely unnatural, but may be the cause of much matri- 

 monial unhappiness. Parents and schoolmasters act 

 as if innocence in such matters could last for life, and 

 as if knowledge were a crime. 



''But a much more serious, because infinitely more 

 common, evil is the objectionable mode in which sexual 

 knowledge generally gets access to the mind. Instead 

 of being conveyed in some plain and matter-of-fact 

 manner, it is too often gained through the corrupting 

 medium of lewd jest or obscene print. At the most 

 emotional and plastic period of life, when new instincts 

 are swelling up and causing great mental disquietude, 

 we withhold from boys and girls the knowledge which 



