The missionary work must, therefore, begin in the nursery. The drunkard is not expected to embrace temperance by acquiring the knowledge of the injurious effects of excesses in alcohol upon soul and body. His impaired will cannot resist temptation. He must be taught to be temperate before he becomes a drunkard. The same is the case with the boy who has once tasted illicit venery. All the preaching will generally be for naught. Knowledge at this time comes too late. The young man who has gone through all the suffering of gonorrhea and syphilis, as soon as he is cured, and sometimes even before a perfect cure has been reached, forgets everything, under passion to resistless impulse, and associates again with meretricious women. His practical experience, just as the theoretical knowledge of the medical student, is not powerful enough to keep away a man from illicit indulgence, once he has made its acquaintance. But if the dangers are known to the individual before he has tasted from the forbidden tree of knowledge, he will, in most cases, avoid tasting the fruit which may contain one of the deadliest poisons. Hence the lessons in sex-matters must be given quite early. It is very unfortunate that even the cultured public has not learned yet that the young child, even the infant, shows some sex manifestation. The general public is unwilling to be enlightened about the genetic functions of the child. There is no need to go as far as Freud’s school and reduce the most innocent infantile natural activities to the emotions of sex; still it is agreed among the keenest observers that, if infants and small children are not carefully watched and protected against themselves, lewd servants, and ignorant mothers, autoeroticism may be established at such an early period that the first lesson in sex instruction will come too late. For masturbation, once it has become a habit, will seldom be relinquished until normal sex relations take its place, instruction or no instruction.[BK] The child must be brought up in such a way that it will reach puberty without any kind of contamination, either by masturbation or by prostitution. Only upon such pure and chaste children will lectures on the dangers of sex irregularities have any influence. The reason why the medical student with all his supposed knowledge of sex is not different from any other young man, is that he acquired his knowledge too late to be of any value. If he had begun his studies on the pathology of syphilis and gonorrhoea and had known the dangers of the venereal scourge before he ever had a taste of sex, it is very likely that with the knowledge of the danger lurking, not only to himself but also to those dearest to a man’s heart, his future wife and children, he would abstain from the association with meretricious venery. But when the medical student began to gain the knowledge of sex,[BL] it was too late for him to resist. Like the habitual drunkard, he had lost the power of resistance.