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Page 25
But now I come to what on all hands we must allow to be a point of
extreme difficulty. I think all head-masters, deeply concerned in the
moral welfare of the boys under their charge, would emphatically endorse
the following words of Dr. Butler's:
"It is certain, it must needs be, that boys should, at an early
period of their boyhood, come to hear of the nature of sexual
relations. From whom should they first learn it? Should it be with
every accompaniment of coarseness, of levity, of obscenity? From
some ribald groom in the stables? From some impure maidservant who
has stolen into the household and the nursery? From some brother
only a year or two older, who has just received his first
initiation in impurity at a private school and is too young to
understand its danger? Worst of all, from the idlest, and most
corrupt, and most worthless set of boys at this same private
school, who surround the newcomer within a few days, perhaps a few
hours, of his first joining, and, with knowing looks and enticing
words, try to probe his childish knowledge, and leave him
half-ashamed of himself and keenly inquisitive for full initiation,
if he finds that he knows nothing of this engrossing mystery? Is it
right, is it fair, is it consistent with religious duty or with
common-sense, that a little boy of eight, or ten, or twelve, should
be sent at this impressionable age to hear for the first time of
facts of human nature which must ere long be known, and are part of
God's appointment? Does not every dictate of humanity and of reason
point to the conclusion that the dawn of this knowledge should be
invested with all that is tender, and loving, and pure, and sacred,
instead of being shrouded in the mists of innuendo or blazoned
forth in the shamelessness of bestiality? There is really no
answer but one to such a question, and the plain truth is that
fathers, perhaps still more mothers, must recognize the duty which
lies upon them to teach their children, at such times, in such
words, and with such reservations as the character of each child
may suggest, the elements at least of that knowledge which will
otherwise be learnt but a very little later from a widely different
set of instructors. I lay down the principle as admitting of no
exception--I do not anticipate even one dissentient voice from any
who now hear me--_that no boy ought ever to be allowed to go to
school without learning from his father or his mother, or from some
brother or tried friend considerably older than himself the simple
facts as to the laws of birth and the terrible danger of ever
coming to talk of these phenomena as matters of frivolous and
filthy conversation_."
I can only beseech you to give due weight to these words of one who had
many years' experience of a large public school. Over and over again, at
all my meetings of educated mothers, I have reiterated his question in
similar words, "Is it right, is it fair, that your boy should learn the
sacred mysteries of life and birth from the sources which Dr. Butler
enumerates, and to which you abandon him, if you refuse to speak;
sources of unclean and lying information by which I have no hesitation
in saying that the mind and conscience of many men are more or less
permanently defiled, even when the life has been kept outwardly pure?"
Can you hesitate for one moment to allow that the springs of the life
which you will be the first to acknowledge comes from God should well up
from a pure source, till, like Wordsworth's stream--
"Crowned with flowers,
The mountain infant to the sun laughs forth,"
and that the whole subject should be so bound up in the boy's mind with
his father's love for his mother, his mother's love for his father, with
his own existence, and that of his sisters, that he would shrink with
utter loathing from the filthy so-called "secrets" that are bandied
about among schoolboys? I know that the task of conveying this knowledge
presents many difficulties, but again I ask, "What is there in our life
that is worth doing which is not difficult?" Long ago the definition of
a difficulty to me has become "a thing to be overcome." It is not in
sitting down helplessly before a difficulty that the way will open. With
us, as with the Israelites on the brink of that raging midnight sea, it
is in a brave obedience to the Divine command, "Go forward!" that the
path opens through the trackless sea, and we find that the great waters
that seem ready to overwhelm us are in reality a baptism into new life.
III
Again I seem almost to hear the cry of your heart, "I know I ought to
speak to my boy, but how am I to do it?"
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