SEX AND THE INDIVIDUAL 197 



any society. Yet it is true that however powerful 

 may be the sexual impulse, its illicit gratification is 

 under no conditions essential to the health of man 

 or woman. This impulse is doubtless difficult to 

 control, and especially so in some persons, but 

 though it can be learned only by years of intelligent 

 education, self-control is as possible here as in any 

 other direction. It is quite within the power of 

 conscientious and intelligent parents to bring up 

 their children in such a way as to screen them from 

 premature and illicit sexual indulgence. But this is 

 only possible where intelligence is sufficiently great 

 to grasp the fundamental fact that to have good 

 children is a profound privilege and not a burden, 

 and that every practice which imperils this privilege 

 is liable to lead to suffering and loss of personal self- 

 respect. On the other hand, thoughtless produc- 

 tion and thoughtless bringing up go hand in hand, 

 and so long as it is the ideal of a nation to increase 

 in numbers without reference to quality, no prog- 

 ress can be expected in the restriction of prostitu- 

 tion, because there will always be a large undis- 

 ciplined class. It is, indeed, inconceivable that 

 even the most advanced nations will not always 

 contain a lower stratum so uncontrolled and unintel- 

 ligent as to keep alive the practice of prostitution, 

 but there is ground for hope that in time a much 

 larger proportion of the population will prove in- 

 eligible for prostitution than is at present the case. 

 Poverty is a factor in^the case in so far as it favors 



