It is useless for a boy to try to become a strong man unless his sex organs have the best of care. I don’t mean that you should keep your mind upon the subject; quite the contrary. If you have kept them clean and attended to the little matters I have mentioned, your mind will not be upon the sex organs. If you wash your teeth every day and have them always in good condition, you do not think of them. You chew your food thinking of the coming ball game――not of your teeth. But if you neglect them soon come pain and trouble; then in spite of all the thinking of the next ball game, your mind WILL go to those awful teeth. Just so with your sex organs; a decent regard for their care drives out all thoughts but what are necessary and decent. The neglect or abuse of the sex organs――this latter subject we shall have a plain talk about――affects all the other portions of the body. It causes stupidity and soft muscles. Sometimes big muscles will be seen in a youth who has neglected the toilet of his organs. But these muscles are fatty muscles. They do not contain strong, blood-red fibres of true muscles. Moreover, the FORCE behind these muscles, the nerve cells, are themselves weakened by the absorption of secretions and the whole general effect of the unclean and often abused parts. Remember this fact: You cannot perform big deeds when a man if you have neglected the little ones belonging to the development of your body. The foundation of every big structure, brain or building, is the essential part of the work. Unless this is built upon solid ground and of solid material, ruin comes when pressure is brought to bear. I have seen hundreds of men with powerful brains and intellects unable to utilize them because their foundations for withstanding pressure were weak. And it was ever the same old cry: “No one ever told me, Doctor!” At an early age you will be faced by a great injury to all boys. It is the appearance in the public schools of smutty pictures, lecherous talk and nasty stories. Now all these go to make for a weak foundation. If you have grasped the full sense of sex life,――what it means to your future, what it can do for a glorious life or a miserable end,――you will shun such nasty things as you would a boy with the smallpox. I want you all to know everything about sex life; but smut and filth are not connected with this knowledge. They have nothing to do with sex development. Nothing more to do with a full appreciation of the powers growing in you than the ulcers of a foul disease have to do with the growth of a healthful skin.