Each one from earliest childhood should on every question asked about
this subject receive honest answers, suitable for the especial stage of
his development. One should be in this way completely enlightened about
one's own nature as man or woman, and so acquire a deep feeling of
responsibility in relation to one's future duty as man or woman. One
should be trained in habits of earnest thought and earnest speaking on
this subject. In this way alone can there come into existence a higher
type of sex with a higher type of morality.
But at the time when Bjoernsen in _Thomas Rendelen_ brought up the
question of training youth to purity through intelligence of nature's
laws, I objected to his book on the ground that like the purity sermons
of Christianity his efforts were rather directed to the mastery of
natural impulses than towards their ennoblement. I showed that Bjoernsen
certainly brought up two new points of view, that of bodily health, and
that of the ennobling of sex. He did not, as Christianity does, stress
the spiritual and personal side of the question. These new points of
view of his were significant, because they united the just egoism of the
individual with the combining altruism produced by the feeling of
solidarity. The great purpose of Bjoernsen's book was to transform
inherited characteristics as they are related to man's attitude towards
morality. So he proposed to create a sound and happy new generation, in
which the sufferings of present day sexual discord should be brought to
an end. For this purpose he wished the collaboration of the schools.
They were to communicate the knowledge of human beings as members of
sex, and to instruct their scholars how, as human beings, they should
protect themselves and their posterity.
I objected at that time to this plan, showing that the school was not
the place to lay the foundation for such knowledge. It should be slowly
and carefully communicated by the mother herself; the school should only
give a theoretical basis. More defective still, I found the question of
chastity handled essentially and solely as a question of bodily purity,
as a negative not a positive ideal. I maintain that only erotic idealism
could awaken enthusiasm for chastity. The basis for such idealism must
be found in stories, history, and belles-lettres. Information derived
from physiology is, in this respect, very inadequate, unless the
imagination and the feeling are moved in the same direction. Neither
imagination nor feeling can be helped by natural science and bodily
exercises alone, and just as little by Christian religious instruction.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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