THOMAS 
WALTON 
GALLOWAY SEX AND LIFE SEX AND LIFE 
A Message to Undergraduate Men 
THOMAS WALTON GALLOWAY, Ph.D.; Lirr.D. 
« * * 
Author of “Biology of Sex” and “Reproduction” 
ASSOCIATION PRESS 
New York: 347 Madison Avenue 
1919 Copyright, 1919. by 
The International Committee of 
Young Men’s Christian Associations DEDICATED 
TO 
My Mother, My Sister 
My Wife, and My Daughter CONTENTS 
LECTURE 
Introduction ix 
I. The Nature of Sex i 
II. Sex and Development 23 
III. Sex and Health 39 
IV. Sex and Personality 58 
PAGE INTRODUCTION 
The sex instinct is the most powerful and most 
pervasive human instinct. It touches life in every 
aspect. On the one hand its strands reach up into 
the finest structure of the human soul, with capacity 
to enrich life and give it power; on the other hand 
its roots lie deep in primitive soil, with capacity to 
degrade life below the level of the brutes. What 
contribution it makes to life depends on the way it 
is educated and used. 
Up to recent years we have had an almost entirely 
desexed educational system. In the training of the 
home and in the education of the schools, colleges, 
and church the subject has been studiously avoided. 
Worse still, parents and teachers have, by their own 
attitude, enveloped the subject in an atmosphere of 
secrecy and shame which has served to stimulate 
precociously a natural and insistent sex curiosity 
on the part of children and young people, and driven 
them to unwholesome sources for their information. 
Careful studies show that the prevailing social prob- 
lems of sex have their source in precocious stimula- 
tion of sex interest, distorted knowledge and 
sensualized minds, far more than in inherent press- 
ure of sex impulses. 
IX X 
INTRODUCTION 
The dawn of a new day in which the sex instinct 
is to be given wise direction and discipline through 
education seems now to be well advanced. While 
other factors are important, we are coming to ap- 
preciate that correct education is the most vital fac- 
tor in arriving at a real solution of the problems 
of sex in society. 
The United States Government appreciated this 
fact in its splendid and successful attack on the 
problem as it related to the Army. It took drastic 
steps to make the environment wholesome by re- 
pressing prostitution in every form. It provided an 
abundance of clean recreational activities to direct 
leisure into right channels. But it did more: it put 
into operation the most comprehensive program of 
education in matters of sex that has ever been 
known. Without it we could never have produced 
the cleanest army the world has ever seen. 
There exists yet a good deal of uncertainty as 
to what the character of sensible sex education 
should be. There are those who place paramount 
emphasis on the nature and the serious consequences 
of the venereal diseases. These diseases are a very 
serious menace to society and these facts must be 
known. But to approach the teaching of sex ex- 
clusively from this angle and to leave the subject 
in the atmosphere of the venereal clinic is most 
unfortunate. It is depressing and misleading. It INTRODUCTION 
XI 
tends to leave the impression that the abnormal is 
the meaning of sex in human life. It fails to inspire. 
There are others who lay greater stress on teach- 
ing the normal physical facts of sex, namely, the 
anatomy, biology, physiology, and hygiene of sex. 
This is a long step in the right direction. It is, 
however, not enough. We must not only give cor- 
rect information, but we must furnish adequate 
motive for self-mastery and right conduct. Correct 
knowledge is necessary for intelligent action, but 
it is ideals that create atmosphere and inspire to pur- 
pose and action. What is first of all necessary is 
so to interpret the meaning of sex in life and in 
society as to bring out its big, positive values in 
character, in happiness, in power, and in social 
worth. Love is the great dynamic of life, and love 
has grown out of sex and is intimately bound up 
with it. A man’s sex life is not merely a matter of 
the individual. It is a matter of his most significant 
relationships—friendship, love, parenthood, brother- 
hood. These are relationships of affection. The 
character and the atmosphere of a man’s sex life 
determine more than anything else the quality of 
these relationships. The purpose of sex education 
must be not merely to avoid evil consequences, but 
to make the sex instinct contribute its best in the 
attainment of the richest and fullest life in all 
human relationships. XII 
INTRODUCTION 
Dr. Galloway’s treatise is admirably in line with 
this larger purpose of sex education. He has in- 
terpreted sex in its spiritual as well as its physical 
values; he has set forth in clear and simple fashion 
the practical knowledge which every young man 
should have for a healthy and correct sexual life; 
he has shown forcefully the consequences of the 
misuse of sex; he has pointed out appealingly the 
significant social bearings of the whole question; 
and he has permeated his teaching with a splendid 
and inspiring idealism. Dr. Galloway has made 
a real contribution to our best literature on the sub- 
ject. 
M. J. Exner, M.D. LECTURE I 
THE NATURE OF SEX 
May I have the pleasure, in the pages that are to 
come, of introducing you to yourself? May I try 
to prove to you that you are in the very midst of the 
most splendid period of your own development? 
I am not thinking of the great opportunities that 
belong to you as a high school or college man; 
though this itself is something for which you may 
well be grateful. I am speaking rather of your 
more vital privilege of being a normal, developing 
man at all. 
The only difference between ourselves and our sis- 
ters or mothers is our sex. At the present moment 
your sex is rapidly molding your whole life. It 
has already given you your manly physical qualities. 
It will continue to develop your bodily strength and 
vigor. It is now stamping itself on your mental 
and temperamental nature. It—your sex—is color- 
ing and will largely determine your social, esthetic, 
moral, and idealistic powers and points of view. 
Possibly you have thought of all these things as 
settled for you in some fatalistic way by mysterious 
and supernatural forces. As a matter of fact, your 
1 2 
SEX AND LIFE 
sex is very largely responsible for the form they 
take. 
If you were to undertake to picture to yourself 
the desires of your heart, the great purposes and 
ambitions of your life, they would almost certainly 
include something like this: “I would have a well- 
proportioned, muscular, athletic body, with all the 
manly strength that belongs to such a body; I must 
have the mental qualities, the courage, the initiative, 
the vigor, the keenness, the resolution that great 
men have, to match this body; I want the ability 
to be attractive to the young women whom I meet, 
and to move with them easily in equal and com- 
plementary social life; I want to win and protect 
and cherish, when the time comes, the finest and 
most appealing girl I can find, and continue to 
develop the traits of person that will hold her de- 
votion ; I want a home which shall be my own, with 
children who shall carry on the best that their 
mother and I can give them of human qualities; I 
propose to have the best masculine attitude of pro- 
tection and fairness and chivalry to all women as 
such, just because of my appreciation of what my 
mother is and because these are the inherent marks 
of the gentleman; I want to develop such a sense 
of beauty as will enable me to enjoy the appeals of 
art, literature, human associations, and the ideal- 
isms that make for happiness, democracy, and jus- THE NATURE OF SEX 
3 
tice; and, finally, I propose to be a positive factor 
in successfully undertaking and carrying through 
difficult and important tasks which tax my own 
manhood, heroism, and idealism to the very limit.” 
These are some of the things we men, if we are 
normal, lay out for ourselves. We may fail to reach 
some of them. But at this time of your life these 
ambitions mark the right-minded young man. They 
show, too, the possibilities of the human race. You 
do not have these desires now in a haphazard way 
or merely because you are eighteen or twenty years 
old. They depend upon two great things: on your 
own sex development, and on the mother and father 
whose character and devotion have given you a 
home. Within yourself, your sex is literally making 
you. It is directly developing in you these ambitions 
and is giving you both the physical and the spiritual 
powers by which you can realize them. Outside 
yourself, the clean and devoted home life of your 
father and mother has been the largest single fac- 
tor thus far in your development. Probably it will 
always be the largest. This home life is an expres- 
sion—the best possible—of their sex. You will not 
forget this as you plan to make a home of your own. 
Your sex is not merely a quality of you, like the 
color of your hair or the shape of your nose. On 
the contrary, it is an active cause of you. Very 
early in your pre-natal life certain germ cells were 4 
SEX AND LIFE 
put aside, or segregated, from those cells that were 
making your body. These early germ cells do two 
inconceivably important things: first, they give rise 
in time to all the sex cells by which we humans re- 
produce our kind; and, second, they influence in 
most profound ways by their presence the body, 
male or female, which is carrying them. You have 
the male qualities of body, of which you are justly 
proud, because of the presence and activity of these 
cells; you have your male cast of mind and tempera- 
ment because of them; your desires—not merely the 
bodily sex passion, but all those that make you dif- 
ferent from women—have arisen through the pres- 
ence of these cells. No less the powers and am- 
bitions which are genuinely manly have come to you 
because male cells, rather than female cells, are 
housed in your body. 
It is my hope in these four brief lectures to illus- 
trate some of these points more fully, to show you 
what a remarkable thing our sex is, to suggest the 
points at which it stimulates individual and social 
life, and to inquire how we may reap the greatest 
value and satisfaction and inspiration from its pos- 
session and use, and may avoid disasters which come 
from the perversion of these great possibilities. 
The Greatest Influence in Life 
Let us examine in some detail the part sex plays THE NATURE OF SEX 
5 
in human life. As you read these words what ideas 
arise in your mind with the term sex? Does it 
suggest something shameful and vulgar? Does it 
stand for temptation, indulgence, impurity, disease, 
and the like? It may. If so, it only proves that 
your view is incomplete and narrow. It is unfortu- 
nately true that most of our early ideas of sex come 
to us in vulgar ways from boys a little older than 
ourselves or from degenerate men. This is not only 
unfortunate. It is wholly unfair that society should 
not see to it that the fine and positive facts of sex 
should reach us at first. Indeed, it is quite as much 
that you may resolve to see to it that your own 
younger brothers and your sons, when you have 
sons, shall appreciate sex at its true value, as for 
your own sake, that I am pointing out these facts. 
These vulgarities are only the perverse and ab- 
normal aspects of sex—the abuses of it. The real 
thing is always more vital and important than any 
abuse of it can be. So it is in this case. Probably 
no single feature in the life of human beings has 
so much influence upon our thought, our conduct, 
and our social relations as reproduction and sex. 
For the next fifteen or twenty years your own in- 
dividual life is more and more to be gripped and 
guided by the powerful sex impulses within you. 
If you are normal you have entered, because of your 
sex, upon the most superb and yet most critical 6 
SEX AND LIFE 
period of your personal development. It ought to 
be a call to the best that is in you. The happiness 
and welfare of yourself and all those you love are 
concerned. 
But for sex and sexual reproduction there would 
be no males and females, no boys and girls, no men 
and women, no lovers, no courtship, marriage, hus- 
band and wife, home, or love of mates; no father 
and mother, sons and daughters, brothers and sis- 
ters ; no love and care of mothers and fathers for 
children, or of children for parents. These things 
have grown directly out of sex. The terms are all 
sex terms. Stop and think what these relations 
already mean to you. From this time on their 
meaning ought to increase for you. 
One can easily see that it is about such relations 
and ideas as these that all our finest, most human 
sympathies and devotions have arisen. Not one of 
us would care to live the selfish, unsocial life that 
would be left, if all the realities I have named were 
destroyed. We would not even read a novel in 
which none of these appear. Indeed, without them 
human society could have no organization such as 
we have at present; for the home is the very 
basis of society, and sex is at the foundation of the 
home. 
It is conceivable that animals as intelligent as we 
are could have some sort of industrial and economic THE NATURE OF SEX 
7 
and social organization if these sex facts did not 
exist; but it would be vitally different from what 
we know now. It would be merely material and 
selfish. Of what meaning, for example, would 
wealth be if there were no wife, mother, sister, 
sweetheart, child, or home to share its benefits? 
Furthermore, as we shall see later, not alone our 
social instincts, but our sense of beauty, our hu- 
manity, our poetry and art, our moralities, our reli- 
gious nature itself are all profoundly influenced and 
developed by sex. Sex has made possible the spirit- 
ual and social phases of life. One may fairly say, 
then, that all which is really most worth while in 
our human life, both individually and socially, is 
either the direct outcome of sex itself or has 
been given its finest and best meaning because of 
sex. 
It is a perfectly normal and sane desire to secure 
from our sex nature and sex relations the fullest 
possible inspiration and returns in happiness both 
for self and society. We should make the most 
of them. They are intended to enrich life. To this 
end there is nothing we humans so much need as a 
sane understanding and appreciation of the real 
qualities and meaning of sex in our lives and of the 
contribution it may make to our development and 
our happiness. 
This series of studies seeks to bring to young men 8 
SEX AND LIFE 
an answer to the question: How can we use our sex 
in such a way as to get the greatest gain from it? 
The Need of Knowledge and the Way to Get It 
For a proper use of sex, young people need much 
more and much better knowledge than they usually 
get. Sex is too vital and too complex in its in- 
fluence upon the whole of life for us to be able to 
get its real contribution to us in a haphazard way 
and if we are ignorant of its significance. Young 
people need for their guidance, and have a perfect 
right to demand, all the essential facts about their 
sex life. At each of the various stages of his own 
sex development every young person should receive 
such information and help as may be necessary to 
preserve health, to develop right thinking, and to 
guide the ideals and conduct of that period. This 
is necessary in order that our sex growth and happi- 
ness may go on and increase normally to the very 
end of life, and may not lead us into behavior and 
habits which are sure to destroy the very happi- 
ness they seek. 
There are just three ways to get our knowledge: 
by individual experience, by observing the experi- 
ence of others, and by teaching or instruction. No 
doubt experience is the surest and most convincing 
possible teacher. The whole meaning and purpose 
of education is, however, to save experience. It THE NATURE OF SEX 
9 
tries to bring the great discoveries of the race to the 
young in such a way that they shall be willing to 
assimilate and profit by such knowledge without 
having to go through all the disasters the race has 
suffered in getting the experiences. Experience is 
the most expensive possible teacher both in time 
and personality. 
The theory that a young man should “sow his 
wild oats,” whether in respect to drink or sex or any 
other form of dissipation, is merely this: “Such un- 
controlled self-indulgence seems alluring, but it al- 
ways brings more sorrow and distress than it does 
satisfaction to any one who has in him anything 
more than the lower animal qualities. By experi- 
ence those young people who are really worth any- 
thing will find this out, and through the knowledge 
gained by experience they will ultimately have the 
strength of personality and the sanity to break up 
these bad inclinations, to blot out these experiences, 
and to correct these habits.” This may often be 
partly true, though this is not the usual outcome of 
uncontrolled life. That it may occur at all, however, 
is a tribute to our human nature and powers. But 
this is very expensive both in time, in character, 
and in human welfare. Many who might have been 
fine human beings if well guided, fail entirely to 
regain their lost control, and thus completely wreck 
their possibilities. Those who do regain mastery are 10 
SEX AND LIFE 
permanently seared and scarred and limited in their 
whole inner and higher nature by their hard experi- 
ences. There is no possibility of miraculous or com- 
plete undoing of the results of wrong experience. 
We have vainly imagined religion to furnish such 
an escape. It cannot. We must pay the penalty of 
wrong actions in the mental and spiritual life just 
as inevitably as in the physical. Nature does have 
curing and regenerating power, but we never com- 
pletely make up for our wrong responses. We al- 
ways suffer. We always despise ourselves and the 
ugliness of our misdeeds. The higher and better 
we grow the more true this is. 
Furthermore, individual life is too short for each 
of us to rediscover for himself all the right and 
wrong paths which the race has found. With such 
a program no progress would be possible to the 
race. It is possible to progress in our evolution only 
because, and to the extent that, the race can put its 
experience into teachings, and make these so con- 
vincing that you and I are willing to forego hurtful 
conduct. Thus we have both time and character 
for real upward progress. 
The Great Individualistic or Self-Building Func- 
tions 
The common functions of your body about which 
you have studied in physiology are for the purpose THE NATURE OF SEX 
11 
of upbuilding and preserving yourself. By means 
of your digestive activities, by exercise, and by 
breathing, you take in food, build up the tissues with 
it, and develop the energy of body and mind that 
constitutes your life. Similarly, your senses bring 
to you knowledge of the outside world. Through 
the powers of your nervous system you are able, 
by means of this knowledge, to build up your inner 
mental life in much the same way that your physical 
body is builded by nutrition and exercise. All these 
and other powers lead to growth, to self-building, 
to individual development. In a word, they furnish 
the income of personality. They are necessary to 
your success as an individual. Since their results 
minister to the building up of the self, these powers 
are purely self-serving and individualistic powers. 
These selfish functions underlie all else. But for 
them there could never be anything better. By the 
selfish taking in of food, by exercise, by growth 
and development, perfect and mature individuals are 
produced. It is a great sign of the true meaning 
of our universe, however, that selfishly built in- 
dividuals should be capable of something finer than 
selfishness. Let us see about this. 
Reproduction: Its Nature and Its Relation to the 
Preceding 
If, however, the above were all, life would have 12 
SEX AND LIFE 
been very limited. An individual cannot live for- 
ever. It cannot go on growing indefinitely. In- 
stead of this, when a certain growth has taken 
place a new and strange process begins, involving 
a complete change in behavior. The individual, 
whether high or low, simple or complex, splits off 
a portion of itself, so selfishly built, to make a new 
and young individual. This is reproduction. It is 
just the opposite of the former process. That was 
growth; this is division. That was selfish; this 
is unselfish. This new offspring is always formed 
at the expense of the old individual. It means sacri- 
fice. It makes more individuals of the same kind, 
who will carry on the life. Furthermore, these new 
individuals are young. They are not as old as the 
parent of which they were a part. This looks to 
the good of the species. If the individual does not 
produce a new one, it finally grows old and dies 
and ends its life as selfishly as it lived it. Organisms 
can escape death only by this unselfish act of re- 
production. If they do reproduce, their escape is 
complete. This is the most marvelous and far- 
reaching fact in life. 
In the lower organisms, such as bacteria and one- 
celled animals, the mature organism reproduces by 
simply dividing into two equal, half-sized young 
organisms. The process is quite simple. The 
mother organism is completely lost in producing two THE NATURE OF SEX 
13 
daughter plants simultaneously. In yeast cells the 
mother cell often sends out from itself a small bud 
which gradually grows up to full size. The same 
result is reached as in simple division. 
In higher plants and animals the manner of divis- 
ion in reproducing is much more complex, but it is 
still division. The parent body, instead of dividing 
into two halves and completely destroying itself 
thereby, separates from itself one or more simple 
cells. These cells have in themselves qualities 
similar to those of the parent, even though they 
may be very small. For example, in the case of 
the whale or the man, one microscopic cell may 
carry the qualities of the species. This act of pro- 
ducing by means of a few small single cells is not 
so keen a sacrifice as the complete division of the 
simple organism, but it is sacrifice none the less. 
It is just a more economic and apparently a better 
way of doing the same thing. 
Sex and Its Meaning in Relation to Reproduction 
There is nothing of sex in the simple budding or 
division of the lowest plants and animals. But one 
of the most remarkable things about the higher 
plants and animals, which reproduce through a 
single cell, is this: ordinarily this single cell which 
the parent produces and sets free cannot develop if 
left to itself. It must unite or mate with another 14 
SEX AND LIFE 
cell of the same species of plant or animal. There 
is great variety in the way in which this mating 
takes place. Sometimes, as in certain lowly plants, 
these uniting cells are much alike in appearance. 
More frequently they are very different. When 
different, one of them is a large, well-nourished, and 
sluggish cell, and is called an egg ; the other is much 
smaller and very active and is called a sperm cell. 
The egg is spoken of as a female cell and the sperm 
as a male cell. This difference in these repro- 
ductive cells is a matter of sex, and is the most 
fundamental fact of sex. This is its real starting 
point. 
In many lower animals and plants the same parent 
may produce both eggs and sperm. That is to say, 
the parent is at once male and female. This is true 
of the earthworms, of snails, and of many plants. 
Usually, however, in any species the parents of the 
eggs (females) are quite different in appearance and 
in nature from the parents of the sperm (males). 
The union of egg and sperm cells is known as 
conjugation or fertilisation. What, then, is the re- 
lation of sex to reproduction? Reproduction is 
division, the separation of cells—offspring—from a 
parent. Sex is a device to unite two of these off- 
spring into one. Fertilization is just the opposite 
of reproduction. It is a union of two offspring. 
Where there were two different kinds of offspring- THE NATURE OF SEX 
15 
cells before fertilization, there is only one after 
fertilization. But this united one can do what 
neither of the single offspring alone could have 
done. It can develop into a perfect member of its 
species. 
Our ordinary bodily activities and functions, then, 
only build up and conserve the individual. This is 
a great thing. But this alone would not build up 
a race of organisms. Reproduction, on the other 
hand, is an individual sacrifice, by which new in- 
dividuals are produced for the good of the species. 
Sex, by combining two of these offspring, fur- 
nishes a better offspring, and thus makes reproduc- 
tion more successful than it would otherwise be. 
Reproduction and sex, while individual qualities, 
help the species. They are really social functions 
and powers rather than individual ones. Sex thus 
makes for progress among organisms. 
The Structure, Functions, and Impulses of Sex 
Inasmuch as the union of the sperm cell with the 
egg is the essential feature of sex, the problem of 
the male and female parent is to bring together 
these cells so that fertilization may take place. As 
we have seen, the uniting cells in the lower organ- 
isms may be alike and the parents which produce 
them are alike. Higher up, the cells become differ- 
ent (male and female) but may be produced by the 16 
SEX AND LIFE 
same parent. This parent may come to have special 
male organs, testes, which produce the sperm cells, 
and special female organs, ovaries, from which the 
eggs are produced. Earthworms are like this. 
Highest of all, as in man and most of the animals, 
the two kinds of parents are quite different. The 
male parent has only testes and produces sperm, 
and the female has only ovaries and produces eggs. 
They come to differ in many things—as general 
structure, color, organs, instincts, and habits. 
Now the great problem in all this matter of ferti- 
lization is to get the sperm and eggs together, so that 
they may unite. As we study plants and animals 
we find almost every conceivable device for doing 
this. Sometimes the sex cells merely escape into 
the water and come together by chance, without any 
help at all from the parents. Usually the female 
cell exerts some sort of attraction for the male cell 
and the latter responds by seeking out and moving 
toward the egg and uniting with it. This could 
happen successfully with such small cells only when 
they are close together. 
In all the higher animals, however, the parents 
do not leave the cells alone, but have special im- 
pulses, instincts, and organs that aid in bringing 
the two kinds of cells together. The essential task 
is still exactly the same—bringing the two cells into 
union; but the solution is much surer. If the THE NATURE OF SEX 
17 
parents can recognize each other; if they have 
mutual sex attractions that bring them together, 
particularly when eggs and sperm are ripe; and if 
they have special organs enabling the sex cells to 
come together, it is clear that fertilization will be 
much more certain than when the cells have no 
such aid from the parents. 
In many animals the males and females differ 
considerably, not merely in their sex organs but 
in many other bodily characters and in their temper- 
ament, instincts, and the like. The instincts and 
organs of the female are related to the task of pro- 
ducing and caring for the eggs; those of the male 
to the task of producing sperm cells and bringing 
them to the eggs. 
In fishes and frogs the female lays the eggs in 
the water, but there is frequently such attraction 
between the male and female at the breeding season 
that they remain close together. The male is thus 
stimulated to free the sperm in the water near the 
eggs. This makes fertilization surer than if no at- 
traction existed between the parents. In reptiles, 
birds, and mammals fertilization takes place inside 
the body of the mother. That is to say, the male 
has instincts that make him seek out the female 
before she lays her eggs. The female has qualities 
that enable her to attract the male and even make 
her actively seek him. The male has special organs 18 
SEX AND LIFE 
for introducing the sperm into equally special female 
organs. From here the sperm pass by their own 
motion to the point in the body where the eggs are, 
and thus fertilization takes place. Both males and 
females have wonderful mating instincts, never 
found except where sex is. 
It is easy to see that these mutual attractions, im- 
pulses, and instincts that drive the male and female 
parents together for mating must be very powerful 
and exact, in order to insure that the males and 
females of the species shall always perform these 
acts so necessary to the continuance of the species. 
Indeed, the attractions of the sexes for each other 
at the breeding season are among the most remark- 
able and powerful in all of life. In lower animals 
they are reflex and instinctive. The desires and 
passions of each sex for the other become very 
strong, and the satisfactions and pleasure of the 
act of mating are apparently among the keenest 
and most intense which animals experience. They 
are probably even more intensely satisfying than 
eating when hungry. A very rich emotional life 
grows up about sex, even in animals much below 
men. Usually the female has these impulses and 
attractions for more limited periods than the male. 
His may be much more continuous and are usually 
rather more strong. 
The value and use of these differences between THE NATURE OF SEX 
19 
males and females—these structures, impulses, ap- 
petites, and passions—are to make certain the bring- 
ing together of eggs and sperm. They do not exist 
for themselves alone, nor for the mere satisfaction 
they give. They are a natural and effective means 
of keeping this unselfish process of reproduction 
going. 
I hope I have been able to make you see the in- 
teresting situation. We have found that the coming 
of sex—the union of the two cells—has meant much 
to organisms. It has given each individual mixed 
blood from two strains. This has proved good, both 
for the individual and for the species. But there 
is much more than this. The increasing attractions 
of mates have brought mutual recognition and a 
sense of satisfaction and of beauty. Indeed, they 
have brought beauty itself. You have noticed the 
beauty of form, color, song, and of devotion in birds 
and other of the higher animals. Devotion is a re- 
sponse to beauty. These various sorts of beauty 
are largely the outcome of sex and an expression 
of it. This higher manner of reproduction also in- 
creases the sacrifices and the care which parents 
give to their offspring. This, too, makes for the 
success of the species, in that it helps the offspring 
to win out. But most of all, the sympathy and love 
of mates and the increased care and devotion of 
parents for offspring make continually better and 20 
SEX AND LIFE 
better parents. Sex is thus lifting animals from a 
plane of mere physical success into the possession 
of the most admirable qualities that we know about. 
Can it be sound that a force, a condition which bears 
such wonderful fruits of beauty, love, sacrifice, de- 
votion, and success shall be considered common or 
vulgar ? Men, be assured that sex is the most splen- 
did and uplifting thing that has ever come to us. 
The Human Bearing of All This 
So far as we can see, we are just like the animals 
mentioned above in all the essential facts of sex 
structure, function, impulses, attractions, and satis- 
factions. Indeed, we believe we derived these quali- 
ties exactly as the other animals did, in the remark- 
able history of our human evolution. 
The essential thing we should gain from this fact 
is to realize that all of these sex qualities in us are 
perfectly natural, clean, fine, and useful to us and 
the race; that they may contribute to our own in- 
dividual development, as they have to that of the 
race; and that there is nothing about sex itself nor 
its impulses which is vulgar or wrong or shameful. 
True, as we shall see later, the fact that we are 
conscious and can remember and reason out the 
values and meanings of it all makes it possible for 
us to rise much above the animals in appreciation 
and use of the functions. Similarly, we may sink THE NATURE OF SEX 
21 
much below the brutes in the use of them. But 
surely this is ground not for shame and abuse of 
them, but for wiser and more human control and 
profit from them. Of course, it is because of the 
abuse of sex that the whole subject has been 
shunned among decent people until recently. We 
are coming more and more to feel, however, that 
the natural, fine, beautiful things about sex are the 
normal ones and that ignorance of these will not 
help us solve the sex problem of society. Sex in 
human beings has, then, all the great value that 
it has in animals. It makes the most successful 
kind of reproduction. It makes more perfect off- 
spring. It gives them better protection. It makes 
them more social. It thus exalts the species. But 
even more: it causes in us the development to its 
highest form of the sympathy of mates for one an- 
other ; of love of parents for children; of constancy 
and devotion; of the beautiful and affectionate rela- 
tions which we associate with courtship, marriage, 
parenthood, and home. These things, men, are the 
essence of sex. 
Is it not the wise and sane thing, then, for us 
humans to try to find and follow such knowledge 
and appreciation of our sex nature as will enable us 
to get from it the very best and highest contribution 
which it can make to our individual character and 
to the progress and quality of the race? We study 22 
SEX AND LIFE 
and use all this knowledge successfully to breed 
horses, cattle, and poultry. Is it not as much to our 
interest to improve the human species and bring the 
greatest growth and happiness to the individuals 
who compose it ? 
Please realize that this is in no sense a sermon. 
It is merely an analysis of the biology of sex as ap- 
plied to humans. LECTURE II 
SEX AND DEVELOPMENT 
The Outstanding Facts of Sex Development in Men 
As we have seen, the sex qualities are even more 
strongly developed in man than in other animals. 
We have just the same male and female organs that 
the cow or dog has. We have the same general dif- 
ferences between the sexes. We have all the sexual 
desires, instincts, appetites, and passions which the 
other animals have, and their purpose is the same. 
Furthermore, we have imagination, memory, and 
other forms of consciousness that enable us to real- 
ize these desires and dwell upon them in thought. 
Because of this, sex has more influence upon life 
and conduct with us than with any other animal. 
The attractions between the sexes are thus even 
more complex and compelling in man than else- 
where. Love drives us more powerfully because we 
have become human. 
We are disposed to think that these bodily and 
mental sex qualities and the differences between 
men and women are just created so. This is not 
true. They grow in a most remarkable but natural 
23 24 
SEX AND LIFE 
way. Each human being starts life as the union 
of an egg cell and a sperm cell in the body of his 
mother. The following is a picture of your own 
early life. When these two cells unite it is prob- 
ably already predetermined within the united cell 
whether the resulting individual, when mature, will 
produce eggs or sperm. This beginning of sex we 
inherit. The quality does not show in any surface 
way, but it is there none the less. As this fertilized 
egg divides again and again, it produces two very 
different kinds of descendant cells: first, the primary 
sex cells from which the future eggs or sperm are 
developed, and, second, the body cells which become 
differentiated into bone and muscle, skin and brain. 
It makes all the difference in the world whether 
these primary sex cells are of the egg-producing 
kind or of the sperm-producing kind. For upon 
this fact depends whether the body will be that of 
a boy or a girl. The body does not determine the 
kind of sex cells; the sex cells determine the kind of 
body. The primary sex cells influence profoundly 
the behavior of the cells of the body in which they 
are developing. For a considerable time nobody can 
tell which sex the body will be. But long before 
birth differences begin to show, and then all through 
life these differences increase. If it is eggs which 
are developing within the body, their influence 
makes the body a female body. If sperm are de- SEX AND DEVELOPMENT 
25 
veloping within, they influence the growth of the 
body so that it takes on male characteristics. 
If these developing sex cells are removed from an 
animal body early enough in life, letting the body 
go on developing without them—as it will—it does 
not become either a true male or a female body, but 
a kind of neutral one. In other words, our body is 
not made male or female outright and, because of 
this, produces sperm or eggs; but it is the particular 
influence of the male (sperm) or female (egg) sex 
cells on the inside that makes the individual body 
grow to be male or female. This is as true of the 
special mental and social characteristics of men and 
women as it is of the bodily characteristics. In- 
ternal sex qualities, then, are the determining' in- 
fluence in producing the peculiar male and female 
qualities of men and women, both of body and of 
mind. 
The Nature and Meaning of Adolescence 
Even before a child is born these internal sex 
cells have influenced the body, so that boys are dif- 
ferent from girls. Boys are on the average a little 
taller and heavier at birth than girls, and the special 
sexual organs are of course differentiated by that 
time. Boys grow a little more rapidly than girls 
until nine or ten years of age; after that till about 
fifteen years old girls grow a little more rapidly. 26 
SEX AND LIFE 
Somewhere about eleven to thirteen years of age the 
sex glands begin more actively to secrete into the 
blood certain substances which are carried over the 
body and produce profound changes in the whole 
organism. The differences between boys and girls 
become greater and more intimate from this time 
on. In a boy at this period the external sex organs 
become larger; hair develops in the armpits and 
about the sex organs; his shoulders broaden; the 
voice-box enlarges and his voice changes to a deeper, 
heavier tone; his muscles develop in size and firm- 
ness; he finally grows faster again than the girl, 
though she matures more rapidly. His mental 
qualities and his disposition, his impulses, his likes 
and dislikes change quite as much as his body. All 
of this is happening because of these internal male 
secretions that have all along been influencing his 
growth. 
This period from about twelve to about twenty- 
two is called the period of adolescence. The high- 
school and college man is right in the midst of this 
development. It simply means that the internal 
sex glands are making normal men and women out 
of boys and girls. These secretions of the sex 
organs modify the growth profoundly. If it were 
not for them, this normal maturing of young men 
and women would not take place. If they are lost 
the development is checked. All of us want to de- SEX AND DEVELOPMENT 
27 
velop into normal men. It is important, therefore, 
that these glands shall not be interrupted in their 
work by any premature or abnormal usage or abuse. 
What Are the Differences between Males and 
Femalesf 
Adolescence is the period of most rapid growth 
into sexually mature manhood and womanhood. 
But men and women differ in marked ways. The 
most important is that to which we have referred 
—the deep, hidden one of the kind of sex cells that 
are developing within the body. The secretions 
produced in connection with these internal sex 
organs—testes or ovaries—give rise to all the other 
differences. There are at least three classes of dif- 
ferences between men and women: first, the differ- 
ences in general bodily characteristics; second, the 
differences in the external sex organs; and, third, 
the differences in impulses, in mental and tempera- 
mental features, and in social functions and char- 
acter. 
We are all familiar with the general bodily fea- 
tures. For example, women are smaller and more 
delicately formed, the muscles are more covered 
with fatty and connective tissue, the body is more 
rounded and less uniform. Men are more muscular, 
more rugged; the body is more uniform in size; 
the skin is coarser and more hairy. 28 
SEX AND LIFE 
The distinctive differences in the sex organs are 
these: In man the testes descend out of the body 
cavity and hang between the legs in the scrotum 
or bag, while the ovaries of the woman remain in 
the body cavity. The man also has special storage 
places for the sperm, and has ducts leading from 
these to the outside world through the penis, which 
is the external organ by which the sperm is passed 
into the vagina. The latter is the female organ 
that receives the sperm. On the other hand, the 
eggs pass from the ovaries of the female into ovi- 
ducts that lead to the uterus or womb. After inter- 
course between a male and female the sperm cells 
ascend from the vagina into the uterus and fertilize 
the eggs as they come to that organ from the 
ovaries. After fertilization the developing egg at- 
taches itself to the wall of the uterus, where it is 
carried for about nine months in humans, until it 
is ready for birth. If the egg is not fertilized, it 
passes outward through the vagina and is accord- 
ingly lost. 
The mental and .spiritual differences between 
males and females are just as real as the bodily 
ones, although they are rather more difficult to 
demonstrate. They will be discussed in a later 
paragraph. 
That the differences which we recognize in men 
and women are due to the secretions, or hormones, SEX AND DEVELOPMENT 
29 
of the inner sex glands is shown by experiments. 
If the testes or ovaries be removed or otherwise 
injured in very young animals or in human beings, 
the later development of the body is very different 
from what it would have been. The special male 
and female characters either do not arise at all or 
they appear in very modified and imperfect form. 
For example, the boy, if castrated, does not change 
his voice to the male register. It remains high 
like a girl’s. His body does not grow to be so vigor- 
ous and his beard does not grow normally. His 
temperament is less masculine, his ambitions much 
less heroic and virile. In some species of animals, 
where the sexes are usually very different, it is prac- 
tically impossible to distinguish a castrated male 
from a castrated female. Neither is like the real 
sexed individuals. They are neuters. They have 
failed to develop rightly because the sex function 
has been destroyed. A rooster that has failed to de- 
velop his external sex characters, because the testes 
have been removed, will develop these qualities if 
testis tissue be grafted into his body and the hor- 
mones are thus restored. Thus we see the internal 
sex secretions actually produce the sex characteris- 
tics in the body. 
The Different Tasks of Males and Females 
As suggested above, the males and females of 30 
SEX AND LIFE 
higher animals do very different work in the joint 
task of reproduction. When a male reproduces he 
produces sperm. When a female reproduces she 
produces eggs. The task of the male is to bring 
this sperm where it can reach the eggs—which in 
the higher forms is into the body of the female. 
The task of the female is to accept the advances of 
the male at the proper time, to receive the sperm, 
and to take care of the fertilized egg after fertiliza- 
tion. The male actively seeks. The female re- 
ceives or refuses. The male has no later organic 
connection with the young. The mother has. One 
may say, then, that fertilisation becomes largely the 
biological function of the male, and that of the 
female is better described as reproduction and care 
of the young. The male function is more momen- 
tary, more keenly satisfying and selfish. The female 
function involves more of sacrifice, and is of longer 
duration. This difference is a most vital one in its 
effects upon the character of the parents. 
The Mental and Spiritual Qualities Growing out 
of Sex 
One can easily see that the difference in the bio- 
logical work which the two sexes must do will call 
for different impulses, instincts, desires, habits, and 
attitudes in males and females, in addition to the 
differences in structure already referred to. The SEX AND DEVELOPMENT 
31 
father in mammals does not have the same oppor- 
tunity to develop love for offspring that the mother 
has. His function of seeking and fertilizing, and 
the keen appetite and satisfaction in the male that 
accompany the sexual act, drive him to mental states 
very much more selfish than those which a success- 
ful female must have. He tends to become even 
more imperious, lusty, overbearing, eager, self- 
gratifying. The female may have keen mating im- 
pulses at the time that the eggs are ripe to be fer- 
tilized. But her long season of carrying her young 
and of caring for it after birth brings out in her 
most striking and powerful self-sacrificing impulses. 
This is seen in birds and mammals particularly. 
From these maternal impulses develop all those fine 
affections and behavior that we prize in mother- 
love, which is one of the very finest forms of love, 
certainly in all our human experience. You cannot 
separate what your own mother has done for you 
from your estimate of what sex means. 
It comes about, therefore, that the nervous, men- 
tal, temperamental, and spiritual qualities of men 
and women differ just as really as their bodily fea- 
tures. While it is not easy to define these differ- 
ences, we all have a very definite idea of what we 
mean by feminine or womanly qualities as over 
against manly and virile. Truly, we humans have 
modified these original sex conditions as they exist 32 
SEX AND LIFE 
in the higher animals. It is to the credit of men, 
that, although not compelled biologically to be as 
unselfish and considerate in reproduction as women, 
they have come through love of mates to love and 
care for their offspring and in some degree to sub- 
stitute unselfishness for indulgence. If we con- 
tinue our human evolution, we shall do this more 
and more. And yet the sexes do not become en- 
tirely alike, and we do not want to become alike. 
We admire feminine qualities in a woman and 
masculine qualities in a man; but we dislike to find 
either in the wrong sex. 
These very sex-differences, both of body and of 
mind, serve to attract each sex to the other. These 
attractions become stronger during the adolescent 
period and after. They are grounded in the physical 
sexual states. This is the animal side of it. But 
we humans have, at our best, developed much 
beyond this. Springing directly out of the physical 
elements, and because of them, some of the most 
beautiful emotions and affections of which human 
beings are capable arise. The love of young men 
and women, the devotion of husband and wife, the 
special love and care of the two parents for their 
children, the somewhat different love of children 
for mother and father—everything that goes into 
the real home spirit is the direct and natural out- 
come of these mental and spiritual sex characteris- SEX AND DEVELOPMENT 
33 
tics, which in their turn rest back on the purely 
animal and physical ones. 
The Complementary Element in Sex 
You must not lose sight of the fact that the sex 
qualities of men and women are complementary. We 
are adapted to each other. To be sure, we have our 
human nature in common, and it is on the basis of 
this likeness that our lives are built. But aside from 
this we need each other because we differ. We have 
seen how the male and female sex cells and the 
bodily organs are biologically fitted and adapted to 
each other. We have seen the keen attractions and 
passions that bring together the bodies of males and 
females for reproduction. These bodily differences 
both attract and satisfy. 
There is an even greater truth of which you must 
not lose sight. The higher sex qualities are also 
complementary. The desires, the emotions, the 
esthetic sensibilities, the appreciations, the enthusi- 
asms, the sympathies, the intellectual processes, 
the temperamental and other spiritual qualities of 
men and women are matched and adapted. To fully 
developed men and women there is even more joy 
and satisfaction in these higher longings and ad- 
justments than in those of the body. 
But perhaps the greatest truth of all is this: These 
higher enjoyments of sex are to be bought only by 34 
SEX AND LIFE 
the mastery and restraint of the lower. It is some- 
what like the use of money. One may rejoice in 
the mere physical counting and hoarding of riches. 
The more one does this, however, the less he is 
able to get joy from spending his money for the 
purchase of those things which sustain life or min- 
ister to humanity or to culture. One cannot be a 
miser and get the whole value of his money. 
Similarly, one may riot in the bodily pleasures of 
sex. The libertine is a shortsighted miser, hoarding 
satisfaction on the physical plane. But, like the 
other miser, he is squandering the more vital thing. 
He is losing the higher possibilities of sex satisfac- 
tion. The complete, rounded-out use and joy of 
sex can come only through foregoing and transmut- 
ing the limited bodily satisfactions into the clean, 
pure, chivalrous sharing of the whole of one’s life 
with the woman worthy of one’s choice. The mind 
and spirit of a fine woman give more joy to a com- 
plete man than her body can. Only in the equal 
and unselfish monogamous marriage can all these 
enjoyments and inspirations reach their highest 
point. 
Very likely you have already experienced some- 
thing of this truth yourself. If you have ever been 
fond of a nice, pure girl, it was not your thought to 
gratify your bodily sex desires at her expense. You 
protected her, even in your thoughts, from any- SEX AND DEVELOPMENT 
35 
thing like this. Your greatest joy was not in the 
thought of her body, though this is attractive. It 
was rather in her charm of emotion, of manner, of 
intellect, of temperament, and in your own chivalry 
in protecting her. It was her quick appreciation 
and sympathy for you, and the pictures of fine com- 
panionship built on these things that claimed your 
devotion. It is the human quality that makes you 
prefer the higher enjoyment above the lower. And 
you are perfectly right. There is more joy and hap- 
piness in the higher satisfaction. 
Love and Marriage 
It is clear from what has been said that sex is the 
basis of about all the love we humans know—and 
love has been very truly called “the greatest thing 
in the world.” Love is an individual state of mind 
and spirit. The purely physical expression of it 
culminates in sexual intercourse. But in the highly 
developed human state sexual intercourse becomes 
much more than a mere physical expression of love. 
In right marriages it is the starting point for, and 
a stimulator of, still higher and more unselfish ex- 
pressions of love and devotion. It increases and 
makes permanent the spiritual bonds, which arise 
out of the physical relations and accompany these. 
Similarly, sex has as its prime purpose the fer- 
tilization of the egg and the building up of the 36 
SEX AND LIFE 
species. So far as mere biology is concerned this 
is all that is necessary—that every female should be 
mated, whenever eggs are ready, with the strongest, 
most aggressive male available. If we were only 
animals, this would be all. But our greatest emo- 
tional, mental, social, and spiritual development 
makes it necessary for us to consider more things 
than this. We have to care for children for a long 
time after birth. We have developed too much fair- 
ness to be willing to say that females, even if they 
could, shall do this alone, as in most of the animals 
and even among primitive men. We have found 
that better children can be reared in permanent 
homes with constant mates. We have developed 
ideas of constancy and chastity. We have developed 
jealousy. All these modify and soften the old 
animal sex impulses. Furthermore, our growing 
sense of fairness has gradually recognized that the 
man is as responsible for children as the female 
is; that if he has the sexual gratification he must 
in honor assume his full share of responsibility; that 
it is not fair for one man to be required to support 
the child of another man, nor to impose his child 
upon another man. In other words, the very ad- 
vances of humans in personal affection, considera- 
tion, duty, fairness, in home-making instincts, in 
social demands, and in meeting the educational and 
economic needs of children, have all made it neces- SEX AND DEVELOPMENT 
37 
sary that the home shall be a permanent institution 
and therefore that mates must be faithful to one 
another, that lawlessness in sex relations is intoler- 
able and breaks down all the hard-earned spiritual 
savings and aspirations of the race, which have 
arisen through sex. Sex has led to the home. And 
the welfare of the home in turn demands finer and 
richer sex relations. Nothing can wreck the home 
more quickly than a perversion and abuse of sex— 
the very force which has made it. 
The sacredness of marriage, then, between one 
man and one woman is not just the preacher’s de- 
vice. It is the most practical and serviceable bio- 
logical means yet devised of making a sound home 
for the proper rearing of children. It is not merely 
to prevent lawless sex relations, nor is it intended 
to make a way for unbridled sex indulgence in wed- 
lock. It is a means of bringing mates together in 
the most intimate, stable, and inspiring relation 
possible to human beings, of securing their most 
complete personal development, and of fitting 
them for the affectionate rearing of children in clean 
and effective homes. 
It is most interesting and encouraging that the 
growing attractions between mates that lead to love 
of the highest type also lead to those home condi- 
tions that make it possible to produce and rear chil- 
dren to the best possible advantage. The home, 38 
SEX AND LIFE 
therefore, tends to make more devoted mates, more 
unselfish parents, and more successful children. It 
is a sex institution which leads at once toward the 
finest possible reaches of both individual and social 
evolution and happiness. LECTURE III 
SEX AND HEALTH 
The Real Problem 
Sex is a tragically powerful force in our life. 
It influences our thoughts, our relations, and our 
conduct as no other quality does. It may make the 
life of men and women take on immeasurable rich- 
ness, fineness, and happiness; or it may bring to 
them the most extreme and degrading disease and 
misery. It is the source of heightened life or of 
tragedy, as we ourselves guide it. 
In the light of these facts the vital problem be- 
fore every human being in respect to sex is this: 
How can I get out of my sex nature and endow- 
ment, for myself and those connected with me, the 
greatest possible health, happiness, and develop- 
ment ? The function of sex is to minister to human 
satisfaction and growth in connection with the 
propagation of the species and the making of homes. 
Clearly any sex behavior which mars this develop- 
ment and happiness, or destroys homes, or inter- 
feres with proper propagation is unwholesome, not 
because laws and conventions say that we must not 
do such things, but innately and essentially. 
39 40 
SEX AND LIFE 
The Positive Relation of Sex to Health 
In the preceding lecture I have tried to show 
how dependent is the normal and proper physical, 
mental, and temperamental perfection of men and 
women upon sex development. This sex develop- 
ment may itself be stimulated or retarded. If sex 
develops abnormally, the whole person will be 
askew. Anything which either interferes with or 
over-stimulates normal sex growth in the individual 
tends to produce abnormal and unwholesome results 
in personality. This is one of the reasons why 
modern educators believe that young people should 
be sanely and wisely taught what is normal in sex, 
and the relation of sex to physical, mental, and 
moral well-being. It is first, that they may avoid 
excesses. And excesses may come either through 
ignorance, or through too much stimulation of sex 
consciousness. In the long run abnormal and un- 
wholesome sex activity means unhappiness and per- 
sonal discomfort—to say nothing of its effect upon 
others. There is no realm in human life where the 
penalty for departing from the right and for defy- 
ing nature’s laws is more sure, whether we are 
thinking of the laws of the body or the laws of the 
spirit. 
Health in any aspect, however, is always more 
than avoiding the wrong thing. So it is in sex. SEX AND HEALTH 
41 
Our real problem is to find the way to make our 
sex nature build up those human powers and graces 
which are its proper product. Nothing less should 
satisfy us. Indeed, our surest way to avoid excess 
and disease is to seek to find normal health and 
growth. 
A Normal Sex Phenomenon 
When a boy begins to approach sexual maturity, 
at sixteen years of age or thereabouts, the sex 
organs increase in size and the testicles produce con- 
siderable quantities of sperm cells. Other glands 
are more or less active, and the result is that the 
male secretions are gradually stored up in their 
receptacles. The accumulation of the semen serves 
reflexly as a stimulus upon the nerve centers, which 
in response may cause a discharge of the secretion 
to the outside. This is not likely to take place in 
the daytime when both nerves and muscles are ac- 
tively employed; but rather during sleep. A youth 
of this age is likely to be awakened occasionally 
by a very excited condition of his sex organs and 
the escape of the thick, fluid semen. This is known 
as a seminal emission. Seminal emissions are often 
accompanied and caused by voluptuous dreams—as 
of embracing a girl or even of having sexual inter- 
course. 
There is nothing exceptional or abnormal about 42 
SEX AND LIFE 
this unless it happens too often. It is nature’s way 
of getting rid of the excess products of the matur- 
ing sex apparatus without sexual intercourse, and 
without injury either to body or spirit. Such emis- 
sions may become abnormal and unwholesome in 
frequency. This is not probable if a young man 
leads a clean, active, temperate life; avoids lascivi- 
ous thoughts and scenes; and keeps a normal at- 
titude toward the whole problem. Rich and stimu- 
lating foods and drinks, constipation, under-exer- 
cise, and over-warm houses and beds may increase 
the frequency. Failure to keep the parts clean, or 
a tight foreskin frequently acts in the same way. 
Most of all, however, direct stimulation of the sex 
organs by handling them, exciting one’s passions by 
seeing suggestive and vulgar things, or much dwell- 
ing upon such ideas will lead to more frequent 
seminal emissions. With most men dancing, or 
other close physical contact with women, works in 
a similar way to increase internal sexual excitement 
and activity. 
If these emissions occur more frequently than 
once in ten days or fortnightly, it is probable that 
there is more sexual activity than there should be. 
With very frequent repetitions a young man should 
feel free to go to the physical director of the YMCA, 
to his family physician, or to some other doctor of 
good standing. There is no disgrace in such a con- SEX AND HEALTH 
43 
dition. There is no danger that these men will think 
there is. Never go to physicians who advertise that 
they treat diseases of men. They are usually quacks 
and may be very dangerous ones. Their purpose is 
to frighten and prey upon inexperienced young men. 
This is a ride which admits of no argument and no 
exceptions: when in doubt about sex matters go to 
the cleanest, best doctor you know. Take no 
chances on quacks. 
Individual Perversions and Abuses of the Sex 
Functions 
There are several ways in which young men may 
abuse and mar their sex health and lay up for them- 
selves sure distress and remorse later. Boys are 
almost certain, as they grow up and begin to feel 
the sex changes, to be tempted to experiment with 
their sex organs. Either in this way, or by actual 
coaching from older boys, they may come to excite 
the penis by handling, so as to produce a pleasurable 
sensation and an artificial discharge of semen. This 
act is known as masturbation, or self-abuse. 
The fact that it is a disgusting performance is 
shown by the feeling that a boy has just after finish- 
ing the act; also by the feeling which one has for 
another person when we know he is guilty of the 
habit. It is not a natural event, as are seminal emis- 
sions, and there is no defense for it whatever. To 44 
SEX AND LIFE 
be sure, it relieves the system of the accumulated 
semen. But even more it excites and disturbs the 
whole organism. There are several facts, beside its 
nastiness, that condemn the practice. It is a waste- 
ful expenditure of vital energy; it is highly exciting 
and enervating; it makes unduly irritable and ex- 
citable both the sex organs and the nerve centers 
controlling them, leading to increased secretion, to 
increased seminal emissions, and to increased waste 
and drain upon the system; it thus interferes with 
the normal sex development which we all prize. It 
coarsens the fiber of the individual and blunts him 
in many of his finer sensibilities. It weakens and 
may destroy the will of the boy and it fastens itself 
upon him as a most difficult habit. It may even 
lead to complete loss of self-control and to mental 
and moral wreckage. 
The habit may be broken, however, as any habit 
may; and surely any thoughtful young fellow, 
caught in the meshes of such a habit, must sooner 
or later realize that evil and only evil can come from 
it. But even though one can and does stop, one 
cannot wholly escape the worst penalty of such a 
practice. This penalty is that such premature and 
abnormal indulgence of sex passions leaves a perma- 
nent mark. These indulgences mar that sense of 
personal worth and of the beauty and integrity of 
personality which is so essential to complete hap- SEX AND HEALTH 
45 
piness and to the feeling of equal partnership in the 
married life to which we all look forward. One 
cannot be uncontrolled and bestial in youth and feel 
comfortable and happy about it when he wants to 
be the husband of a clean, fine woman. Nature 
may postpone her penalties until we flatter ourselves 
that we have been an exception and that she has 
forgotten our sin; but soon or late she manages to 
bring the thing home to us, and usually when it is 
least convenient to pay. Nature has no “statute of 
limitations.” 
Healthy Sex Attitudes and Relations in Youth 
Masturbation is not the only way in which boys 
may produce in themselves sad and unhealthy states. 
To be sure, masturbation makes the whole sex ap- 
paratus irritable and the nervous centers unstable. 
It produces a diseased state of mind. But much the 
same thing may result from continual thought of 
voluptuous things, from vulgar stories and talk 
about sex indulgences, and from indecent and sug- 
gestive pictures and shows. Indeed it is even more 
easy to stimulate and make morbid the whole sex 
nature from within than it is from without. 
It is very easy, and there are many temptations, 
for a young man to fall into these forms of in- 
dulgence. They are sure to arouse his sex desires, 
they continually poison his mind through memory, 46 
SEX AND LIFE 
and he comes more and more to think of girls and 
women in lewd and untrue, not to say ungentle- 
manly, ways. This is distinctly an unhealthy and 
diseased state of mind. It is just as true a mark 
of disease and degeneracy as infected lungs or 
bodily cancer. This state of disease reacts, of 
course, in driving the individual toward worse 
sexual excesses, and these again lead to more de- 
graded mental and moral attitudes. Such a vicious 
circle is hard to break. 
Young men cannot too much insist on preserving 
their mental health in sex matters, and cannot too 
fully realize that self-control may be lost or gained 
in respect to thoughts, ideals, standards, and atti- 
tudes as genuinely as in respect to actions; and that 
diseased habits of mind are as difficult to cure as 
diseased bodies. Yet pure and healthy minds are 
even more essential to happiness than are mere 
bodily health and soundness. To cultivate a state 
of mind which finds satisfaction only in obscene, 
sensuous, and voluptuous pictures and ideas is as 
really self-abuse as masturbation is. 
Social Abuses of the Sex Function 
It is evident that masturbation is a personal vice. 
If one practices it he is, at least for the time, ruin- 
ing no one but himself. On the other hand, sexual 
intercourse is a social act. It involves another per- SEX AND HEALTH 
47 
sonality. When an unmarried man makes up his 
mind to gratify his passion thus, he has only two 
courses open to him: he may bring about the ruin 
of some girl with whom he associates, or he may 
have to do with women who vary in degree of 
prostitution. 
No gentleman, who has any sense of respect for 
womanhood or who prizes purity in the women of 
his own home, can bring himself to violate any girl 
who is trying to live the right sort of life. This is 
not confined to girls of his own social station. By 
the generous-minded and chivalrous man, women, 
whether they have little or great culture, are held 
as deserving of his utmost protection. And to take 
advantage of any woman in this way is rightly re- 
garded by him as the act of a low and brutal coward. 
A real gentleman cannot allow himself privileges 
with such a girl which he would not welcome on the 
part of some other man toward his sister or sweet- 
heart. 
You can see clearly how your attitude toward 
women in general will influence your actions here. 
If your mind has been trained to estimate woman- 
hood by its best and finest specimens, your own right 
purposes will be fortified. If, however, your mind 
has been allowed to cherish lewd and impure ideals 
of women, and is filled and diseased with the false- 
hood that becomes current in some groups of young 48 
SEX AND LIFE 
men that there is no such thing as purity, your men- 
tal disease makes your control more difficult. This 
is why the real gentleman is not the product of a 
few resolutions and a few years. His parents and 
he himself must insist from the beginning on con- 
tinued and unrelaxing self-discipline and develop- 
ment in gentility. To develop this sort of manly 
mastery to its most perfect form is one of the high 
things that make our life worth living. It is much 
harder than to give up to lust. Cleanness in men 
is not due to lack of sex desires, but to positive 
self-control. 
Prostitution and Prostitutes 
The other alternative is scarcely more attractive. 
Yet it may be felt by some young men, who would 
not bring themselves to the dishonor of violating an 
innocent girl, that no vital objection can be urged 
against the gratification of the sex desires with pro- 
fessional whores, or even with girls who have not 
given themselves over to commercial vice, but who, 
through occasional intercourse with men, have al- 
ready ceased to be pure. 
In the first place, even a fallen woman is a human 
being. She has usually been the prey of the lust of 
men, often because she was mentally subnormal or 
felt the need of money or of friendship and love. 
There can be no honor or chivalry in further con- SEX AND HEALTH 
49 
firming and adding to her delinquency. By so doing 
one simply becomes partly responsible for the total 
wreckage of a human being. We owe certain obli- 
gations, furthermore, to any human being who is 
less fortunate than we. It scarcely clears us of 
blame in robbing a man, to claim that he has al- 
ready been robbed of most that he had; it is not 
regarded manly to strike a man already down, or 
to make more drunken one already tipsy. There is 
no difference in principle between these examples 
and using a prostitute for the gratification of our 
own lust. 
In the second place, it is not possible for a young 
man with any generosity of impulse or refinement 
of ideals or of personality to engage in this sort of 
thing with prostitutes and retain the self-respect and 
human appreciations which he had before. It is 
only the coarse, base, and sordid who could fail 
to suffer a moral shock from such a practice, and 
no amount of clean living afterward can ever re- 
move the sense of the personal disgrace of it. His 
sense of what is right and sound and beautiful 
cannot fail to suffer. He never can feel himself 
the equal of the women of his own family. The 
more he has risen above the animal, the more true 
this will be. 
But in addition to these more moral features, 
there are two highly infectious diseases to which 50 
SEX AND LIFE 
all prostitutes and all men who use them are liable. 
Sooner or later both women and men who practice 
promiscuous sex intercourse are almost certain to 
become infected by either syphilis or gonorrhea. It 
is not my purpose here to give statistics concerning 
these diseases. But you will find by talking to your 
family physician that they are two of the most com- 
mon and destructive of human infectious diseases. 
They are the most outstanding blot upon human life 
and civilization at present. 
Syphilis or Pox 
This disease is a systemic one, which may attack 
any part or organ of the body. It is caused by a 
microscopic organism and may be communicated by 
contact, by kissing, from drinking cups, from 
towels, and the like. It may get into the system 
through any abrasion or thin place in the skin. 
Probably in ninety-five per cent or more of the 
cases, however, it is conveyed through sexual in- 
tercourse. It is not surprising, therefore, that once 
started it has become a most common and disastrous 
human disease. Syphilis shows itself in three stages 
—primary, secondary, and tertiary. In the primary 
stages sores develop at or near the point of infec- 
tion. Afterward, as the infection works its way 
into the system, it may show itself in spots over 
the body. In the third stage deep destruction of SEX AND HEALTH 
51 
tissues takes place. No disease known to us pro- 
duces more deep-seated or disastrous results. 
If it is taken early in the primary stage, soon 
after infection, and treated thoroughly and con- 
tinuously, it is at least curable. That is to say, 
under these circumstances the disease may not run 
its course into the destructive third or constitutional 
stage in which the bony tissues are eaten away, 
the skin corroded with ulcers, the blood vessels at- 
tacked, and the nervous tissues undergo degenera- 
tion. But it is at present impossible to promise ab- 
solutely to any person infected with the germs of 
syphilis that he will not convey it to his children, or 
will not himself develop during these later fatal 
stages locomotor ataxia, apoplexy, paralysis, and in- 
sanity. Those who have had syphilis at any time 
have a death-rate estimated as being fully fifty per 
cent higher than that of non-syphilitics of cor- 
responding ages. 
Inherited syphilis is extremely common among 
children of syphilitic parents, and is responsible 
for disease, imperfections, idiocy, insanity, as well 
as for many deaths before, at, or after birth. No 
man can engage in promiscuous sexual intercourse 
and expect indefinitely to escape syphilis. He can- 
not contract syphilis and have a secure hope of liv- 
ing a long, comfortable life and of transmitting 
health to his children. 52 
SEX AND LIFE 
Gonorrhea or Clap 
This is also a germ disease, and is a local infec- 
tion of membranes and passages rather than a con- 
stitutional disease, although it, too, may enter the 
blood and pass to remote parts of the body. While 
it may be communicated in other ways—as, for 
example, from an infected mother to the eyes of 
children at birth—it is almost wholly a venereal 
disease. It invades all the membranes of the urin- 
ary and sex organs, penetrating even to the bladder 
and kidneys and up the sperm ducts to the deep 
recesses of the testes. Because of this fact it is very 
difficult to be sure that one is completely free from 
the infection when once the disease penetrates these 
remote parts. The larger passages near the surface 
may be freed of evidences of the disease while at 
the same time the germs are still lurking in the finer 
inner tubes. 
It has long been considered by young men as a 
disease of no great consequence—often being spoken 
of as no worse than a cold. It is not as spectacular 
as syphilis and does not show itself so strongly in the 
man himself; but, as a matter of fact, it is fiercely 
contagious and very prevalent; it greatly reduces 
endurance and working capacity; it is responsible 
for blindness on the part of a considerable percent- 
age of children born to infected parents; it pro- SEX AND HEALTH 
53 
duces much of the sterility in barren marriages; 
and it is responsible for a large percentage of neces- 
sary operations upon the internal sexual organs of 
women. Gonorrhea is for these reasons probably 
the cause of more distress, unhappiness, and death 
than even syphilis. While possibly the direct con- 
sequences to a young man himself from gonorrhea 
may not be so dangerous as from syphilis, there al- 
ways hangs over him the possibility of infecting 
an innocent wife into chronic invalidism and of his 
children being blind—even years after he thought 
he was cured! This is hardly an attractive prospect 
to one with any remnant of chivalrous instincts. 
The fact that it is a more serious disease to his wife 
than it is likely to be to him has great possibilities 
for remorse. No amount of physical satisfaction 
from wrong sex life can possibly compensate one 
for this sort of a conclusion of life within his own 
family. 
The Social Bearing of These Diseases 
These two diseases, along with other minor ones, 
are by their prevalence an approximate, though by 
no means a complete, measure of sexual impurity 
among men. The ease with which they are trans- 
mitted and the fearful ravages they may inflict upon 
the innocent wives and children of impure men 
stamp them not as individual, but as social, diseases. 54 
SEX AND LIFE 
That is to say, society has some rights and duties 
in the premises. 
Possibly an individual may say that he has a right 
to determine whether he shall debauch and waste 
his own life rather than conserve and invest it; 
though even this may well be open to question. 
However, this right ceases in the light of the after- 
math of disease and distress to other people which 
follows sexual indulgence. These diseases remove 
from productive living annually hundreds of thou- 
sands of lives, guilty and innocent. It is currently 
said of the armies on the European battlefields in 
the first year of the Great War that more men were 
disabled through sex diseases than through wounds. 
Aside from social morals, and simply for the sake 
of the health of the community, men and women 
who are suffering from these diseases in their in- 
fectious stages are more dangerous to society than 
people with smallpox or scarlet fever. Some means 
should be found to make it impossible for such peo- 
ple to spread these plagues, just as has been done 
in the case of the other diseases. Some time we 
may become civilized enough to quarantine all such 
until they die or are cured. 
The Alternatives 
A young man, driven as all men are toward the 
pleasure of sexual indulgence, must ask and answer SEX AND HEALTH 
55 
two questions: First, Am I ready, for the sake of a 
brief period of keen physical satisfaction, to en- 
danger my own health, to shorten my own span of 
life, and to store up for myself habits of thought 
and of life that degrade me in my own eyes and 
in the opinion of all people who have climbed above 
the mere animal plane of living? Second, Am I 
willing to put this self-indulgence as superior to the 
happiness and welfare of my future wife, whom 
I shall promise to honor and cherish, to the health 
and well-being of my posterity, and to the risk of 
perpetuating and extending in human society some 
of the most dangerous and unsocial diseases to 
which man is heir ? 
These questions contain the choices which a 
young man must make. It is a plain matter of self- 
indulgence over against all the interests of all other 
people and all his own higher interests. There is 
nothing whatever of truth in the idea that sexual 
intercourse is necessary for a man’s health or de- 
velopment. No competent authority can be found 
for such a view. On the contrary, all athletes in 
strict training are required to abstain from all sexual 
acts. When men start to the North Pole and must 
develop and conserve their strength and endurance 
to the last degree, they do not take prostitutes along. 
When we desire to develop a fine stallion for breed- 
ing purposes, we do not allow him to begin service 56 
SEX AND LIFE 
when he is twelve months or so old. We first allow 
the hormones which are developing in his testes to 
get into his system, and to develop the powerful 
muscles, the fiery spirit, and the splendid stamina 
which make such an animal so attractive. Maxi- 
mum development even in a sex way is to be secured 
by husbanding the sex resources, not by spending 
them. The whole contrary idea has been worked 
up by lustful men merely as a poor excuse for 
vicious living—with no foundation in biology, in 
common sense, in experience, or in morals. 
Probably with the progress of science the time 
will come when these diseases may be either pre- 
vented or completely cured. Of course this would 
be a great boon to the race; but it would not really 
touch the problems of sex. We men shall still 
have to determine whether we will use sex rightly 
and gain all the high happiness and development 
that it may bring, or whether we will brutishly 
abuse it, and lose the really human part of its gift 
to us. The lower, sensual life of sex has its pleas- 
ures. It would be foolish to deny or ignore the fact. 
But the pleasure is self-limited. That is to say, it 
wanes with its very use. It short-circuits itself. 
In addition, it prevents the higher happiness that 
comes when sex is conceived as above the plane 
of the body merely. 
One may live his sex life on this keenly gratify- SEX AND HEALTH 
57 
ing sensuous plane, grossly and without control. Or 
by self-control he may also fit himself to enjoy his 
life with his wife and his women friends on the 
mental and spiritual levels of sex. But he cannot 
do both. He cannot live the gross and uncontrolled 
life and have any hope of enriching his life with 
the charm, love, appreciation, devotion, companion- 
ship, and loyalty of a pure woman. He automatic- 
ally unfits himself for the intimate comradeship in 
which the body, emotions, intellect, temperament, 
aspirations, and ambitions of the man and woman 
match and supplement one another for the happi- 
ness and self-realization of both. He has cashed 
in his sex assets on the lowest possible plane. In 
direct proportion as he becomes capable of these 
higher enjoyments of his sex endowment will he 
realize the grossness of his inferiority to the woman 
of his choice, and fail of the maximum happiness 
which might have been his. LECTURE IV 
SEX AND PERSONALITY 
The Meaning and Nature of Personality 
The term personality may seem a bit hazy. It 
is not easy to define, and yet every one of us under- 
stands in most part what we mean by it. It is that 
part of one which really makes up himself. We do 
not inherit it. We inherit only the foundations and 
possibilities—or the raw materials, so to speak. We 
build it up from these by our own lives and experi- 
ences. Our personality now is not merely the pres- 
ent self, therefore; it is the most essential part of 
our past selves. It is not an accident. It is not 
predetermined. It is founded, as I have said, on the 
physical, mental, instinctive, and emotional qualities 
that come to us by birth. But now it consists also 
of what we know and our power of knowing; of 
our likes and dislikes; of our desires and appetites; 
of our satisfactions and hopes; of our experiences 
and habits and memories; of our standards and pur- 
poses; of our ideals and attitudes. Most of all, it 
includes our power of bringing together all these 
58 SEX AND PERSONALITY 
59 
things into sound, harmonious, controlled, and right- 
eous choices and decisions. We have been building 
these throughout our whole lives. Personality is a 
great total. It is the whole spirit of us. To those 
of us who believe that this universe is more than 
an accident and is full of purpose and meaning, this 
personality of ours points to the personality of God. 
This is what stamps us as like him. Personality 
is the biggest thing in the universe, so far as we can 
see it. It alone gives point to the universe. With- 
out it a universe like the one in which we live would 
be a stupid failure. 
Personality is that which you admire in your 
friend and hate in an enemy, or love in your mother 
or sweetheart. It is the part of you which enjoys 
and suffers and sacrifices and chooses. It alone of 
you registers the results of all you have ever thought 
or done. It is the only possible permanent thing 
about you. It is that which marks your life and 
yourself a success or a failure. It is what Jesus was 
talking about when he asked, “What is a man 
profited if he gain the whole world and lose or 
forfeit his own self ?” 
The Possibilities—Upbuilding and Destructive 
You must realize from what has been said al- 
ready that this personality of man is very largely 
molded and developed by his sex nature and by the 60 
SEX AND LIFE 
attitude which he himself takes toward his sex im- 
pulses. At its best, sex may guide one into the 
highest and most permanent satisfactions which life 
holds concerning such things as personal self-con- 
trol, poise, development; the social relations of 
friendship, marriage, and parenthood; and one’s 
own moral and spiritual approval, without which 
no lasting happiness is possible. On the other hand, 
if one’s attitude toward sex is unsound and uncon- 
trolled it may lead, by way of intense temporary en- 
joyment, into the prostitution of all that makes per- 
sonality generous, strong, and admirable; it may de- 
stroy our sense of balance, of justice, and of per- 
spective, all of which make for beauty and apprecia- 
tion in life; it may lead to the loss of self-respect, 
which is recognized as being the surest sign of 
personal disintegration. 
It is because the sex impulse and nature are so 
fundamental, so intense, so influential in molding 
right character that they are also capable, if per- 
verted, of poisoning all the finer springs of char- 
acter. 
The Role of Impulses and Appetites 
All our impulses are natural. They are born with 
us. They have important values and purposes in 
life. They have tremendous influence upon conduct 
and all the aspects of personality. They are really SEX AND PERSONALITY 
61 
the driving power of life. The impulse to eat when 
hungry, to drink when thirsty, to seek possessions, 
to learn, to wander, to assert ourselves, to compete, 
to fight, to be afraid, to seek entertainment, and to 
be angry are a few examples. The sex impulse 
or appetite is on the same plane with these. It is 
in itself no better and no worse. There is nothing 
intrinsically wrong with any of them. They have 
come to us in the long animal evolution. 
The reproductive and sex impulses are about as 
old as life itself. In many of the animals just 
below man the attraction of mates for one another, 
the services they render to one another, and the 
care they give to their offspring because they are 
thus bound together, all make life more rich and 
more successful. In the birds and mammals there 
are many cases in which the instincts and habits that 
cluster about sex have helped profoundly to pre- 
serve them in their struggle for existence and to 
give them their place at the head of all the life on 
the earth. They have made more of sex than have 
any other organisms, and sex has in turn made more 
of them. 
The First Effect of Consciousness upon Impulses 
In these animals there is ordinarily no over-in- 
dulgence or perversion of the sex appetite to an 
injurious degree. They merely gratify this impulse 62 
SEX AND LIFE 
whenever it becomes strong enough to demand satis- 
faction and the opportunity offers. These types of 
animals do not have the human form of conscious- 
ness whereby they can remember past indulgences, 
anticipate future ones, and thus by these mental pic- 
tures increase the power of the present appetite. 
There is no moral quality in any of their indul- 
gences. 
When we humans first became human, all these 
impulses were already strong enough to do all that 
nature needed them to do, without such conscious- 
ness. The sex impulse was strong enough to insure 
the propagation of the species. When conscious- 
ness, with memory and imagination, got in its work 
the driving power of all our appetites was made 
stronger than it needed to be. Similarly, conscious- 
ness made the satisfactions that accompany our in- 
dulgences more keen and more likely to be remem- 
bered and treasured. 
Because consciousness plays about appetite for 
food, for example, we prepare tempting foods and 
incite ourselves to eat and drink more than we ac- 
tually need—more than is good for us. And so 
with all other pleasure-giving impulses. They get 
an artificial strength because we have this human 
power to imagine and remember. The lower ani- 
mals, if left to themselves, do not abuse digestion 
as we do. In all our desires, including sex, con- SEX AND PERSONALITY 
63 
sciousness drives us powerfully toward over-indul- 
gence. No animal lives the brutish life that is lived 
by the man who considers only his appetites! 
The Second Effect of Consciousness 
If this were the whole story we might justly feel 
that evolution had played us a scurvy trick in giv- 
ing us this grade of consciousness. But the same 
consciousness also enables us to connect conse- 
quences of past actions with the actions themselves, 
and thus to measure effects in terms of their causes. 
It makes desire and satisfaction more keen; but it 
also makes us able to feel more acutely the satiety, 
the reaction, and the distress that come from over- 
indulgence, and to raise questions as to the wisdom 
and satisfactoriness of our conduct as a whole. It 
makes us enjoy more keenly; but it makes us see 
also that these joys are short-lived and may carry 
in their train much more distress to ourselves and 
to others than they are worth. It makes immediate 
joys more acute, but it also gives us internal esthetic 
ideals to measure them by. If memory and imagina- 
tion strengthen impulses, our consciousness also 
brings all the experience of the past and the purpose 
of the future to help us to control them and to use 
them to the best advantage. It shows us that there 
is much more in conduct than mere present gratifi- 
cation. 64 
SEX AND LIFE 
It is evident that this situation is the biological 
foundation of morals, of character, of all real hu- 
man attainment. There could be no moral meaning 
to conduct until this kind of a choice was possible 
to human beings. Only one course is open to the 
animal which is driven by desire and has the chance 
to indulge it. There are two courses open to us. 
This makes real choice possible. Choice is the very 
heart of morals and of personality. That charac- 
ter which cannot, in the face of two alternatives, 
choose what is best is not sound character. It 
makes no difference how fine is one’s theory of life 
—if one cannot choose the course which in the light 
of the whole situation is recognized as the right and 
best course, the character is wrong and immoral. 
God has been working a long time in nature to give 
us this position of choice. It assures us that we are 
going still higher, as we master the steps of right 
choices. 
The first effect of consciousness, then, upon the 
sex nature is to make it more powerful and domi- 
nant. The second effect is to bring about higher 
restraints that make choice necessary and inspire 
us to control and use sex for higher ends. These 
two effects working together are a wonderful com- 
bination for the development of man, which makes 
it possible to buy higher satisfactions by denying 
ourselves the lower. Always this is the only way SEX AND PERSONALITY 
65 
to reach the higher joys. This is the road of the 
evolution of the spirit. 
What, Then, Shall We Do About These Impulses? 
Clearly it is not the impulse itself that makes for 
wrong when we pervert our animal tendencies. It 
is rather the attitude of the individual toward the 
impulse, and the final choices he makes, which are 
right or wrong. Whether we are thinking of eating 
or sex-indulgence or any other appetite, man cannot, 
after coming into this conscious state, live any more 
on the merely animal plane of indulgence. If he 
follows appetite as the animal does, he will go too 
far. His imagination drives him on. Impelled by 
conscious longing, he will either plunge below the 
animal plane and put the brutes to shame by his 
over-indulgence; or he will control his appetites, not 
in the interest of the moment but in the interest of 
all life, so far as he is able to appreciate it. Thus 
he will live above the animal plane. This is the 
evolution of life—to buy the higher joys and satis- 
factions by sacrificing the lower. The one thing he 
cannot do is to continue to live an unmoral animal 
life. He will improve and become really human, 
or he will degenerate. 
The more perfectly he can imagine for himself 
and appreciate the continued effects of indulgence 
on the one hand and of control on the other, the 66 
SEX AND LIFE 
more likely he is to make his choices wise and 
restrained. This is the point at which one’s parents 
and older acquaintances can be of most help to one. 
Their observation and experience and vision can 
reenforce ours and enable us, better than we can 
do alone, to sense the later rewards and satisfactions 
that come from self-control, as well as the discom- 
forts that come in later life from giving one’s self 
up to sensual indulgence. We greatly need that 
help. This is just what all education means. Fine, 
clean literature—biography, history, fiction, and 
poetry—aids us all. This is the sole purpose of this 
little series of talks to young men. Only as your 
mind opens and responds can it have any real value 
to you. 
This may all seem somewhat theoretical and re- 
mote to you; but in reality nothing is nearer to your 
welfare throughout the whole of your life than 
the sex decisions that you form during your youth 
and young manhood. There are only two attitudes 
you can take toward these imperious, over-strength- 
ened appetites. All of us want to make them yield 
the most permanent happiness and good to us. We 
can use them for intense sensuous enjoyment for 
brief periods at the expense of other people and of 
our own personality; but this route, as has been said, 
is distinctly self-limited. That is, it prevents any 
higher enjoyment, and ultimately destroys its own. SEX AND PERSONALITY 
67 
Or, on the other hand, we may control these im- 
pulses in the light of the best sanctions of the best 
men and women and of our own enlightened nature, 
postpone the use of the impulse, and build up around 
our sense of beauty and of right a life of sanity and 
satisfaction, which increases at every step. You 
can have either of these sex lives. But it is tragic- 
ally true that you cannot have both! You cannot 
lead an unrestrained sex life and later enter on a 
level equality with a pure girl upon your married 
life, any more than you can spend your income day 
by day and expect to enjoy its support later as a 
bank account. 
It is possible for the man who restrains his sex 
desires and lives a perfectly chaste life to approach 
the girl of his choice as a conscious equal and 
propose to her a perfectly honorable, square part- 
nership of happiness and mutual consideration 
throughout life. But no other kind of man can 
do that. If you can do this, that will be the finest 
moment of your life. It will repay you for every 
sacrifice you have made; and it is only the begin- 
ing of the happiness such a marriage may mean. 
If, on the other hand, you cannot do this and are 
an honorable man, the moment when you offer the 
substitute for such a partnership will be the most 
remorseful moment of your life, and you will never 
escape the feeling that you are an inferior and a 68 
SEX AND LIFE 
cheat—that your life lacks its most intimate and 
vital factor for the making of permanent happiness. 
Relation of Personality to the Problem 
Only a part of the truth is told when we say that 
our whole personality is profoundly influenced by 
sex. This personality which we have built up 
through the whole of life is going to determine how 
we will solve all our personal sex choices. The at- 
titude we have been taking toward all our desires 
in the past enters into this personality. If we have 
taken the attitude that we must gratify every ap- 
petite and whim; if we regard as irksome all that 
would cause us to deny ourselves a present gratifica- 
tion; if we have cultivated the feeling that the 
rights of other people should give way when they 
conflict with our pleasure, then there will be little 
disposition to fight and control our sex desires. If, 
on the contrary, one prizes worthy personality and 
self-mastery in himself and others; if he can realize 
that more actual happiness and satisfaction, as well 
as more growth, can come to one by sacrificing im- 
mediate enjoyment for the sake of higher ones 
further away, the choice of self-control and clean- 
ness becomes very much more satisfying and hence 
more certain. 
There is nothing in all our human world that 
taxes and develops or destroys personality as do sex SEX AND PERSONALITY 
69 
situations and choices. There is no triumph of 
character so stupendous and no failure so disin- 
tegrating as those connected with sex. 
There is no short cut to the right solution of these 
sex situations and to the firm establishment of one’s 
character in the right. No artificial rules or resolu- 
tions will do it. Only character, built up of the 
sanest, sturdiest elements, is equal to the task. This 
personality must be fortified by a sense of honor, 
by chivalry, by consideration for women because 
they are the mothers of the race, by pride of char- 
acter that can stand up, by determination to win 
and deserve the respect of others, by desire to build 
up for oneself a pure home with a clean wife and 
healthy children. Every man of us can have these 
qualities, and be finer and happier through having 
them. A man with these as a part of his personality 
can resist the urge of sex and be as pure as a 
woman. And it takes very much more of a man 
to lead a sexually clean life than to live a base one. 
One cannot trust himself, either, to fight this mat- 
ter out anew with each temptation. Some things 
must be fought out once for all and become a 
permanent part of one’s sure defenses and inspira- 
tion. One must know and accept deliberately the 
fineness of the meaning of sex at its best and the 
disasters of it at its worst; he must make permanent 
his desire and determination for right and honor- 70 
SEX AND LIFE 
able sex relations; he must crystallize unchangeably 
his ideals of sex purity; he must confirm his habits 
of clean thinking and planning, his purpose of con- 
serving and developing his highest powers, and his 
determination to win the race. If these general 
attitudes are settled, it is much easier to master 
each separate temptation when it comes. All this 
and more, is what personality means. And its de- 
velopment is possible to every normal young man. 
Just What Sort of an Immorality Is Illicit Sex 
Intercourse? 
The kind of a fight any one of us will put up 
against any vice depends upon our estimate of its 
seriousness. Therefore every one of us must make 
up his mind just how much of a sin illicit sex 
indulgence is. We have commandments against 
lying, stealing, adultery, and murder. Are they of 
equal meaning? Is wrong sex indulgence more like 
petty larceny or murder? The only possible way 
in which a thing like this can be measured is to 
make it universal. Anything of this kind which we 
allow to ourselves we must allow freely to all other 
human beings. We can give no reason for pro- 
miscuous sex indulgence on our own part that can- 
not be claimed with equal justice by every other 
person in the world. What would be the effect if 
nobody were pure; if everybody followed unre- SEX AND PERSONALITY 
71 
strainedly the natural sex impulse? Certainly all 
our social confidence, all homes, and all life and 
organization based on the home would be destroyed. 
Sex has made the home. Unrestrained sex life 
would destroy it utterly. Probably propagation it- 
self would be seriously impaired, and surely general 
moral and cultural disintegration would follow. It 
would certainly be much the same as murder, or 
worse, so far as vital, practical, human results are 
concerned—and not merely the murder of individ- 
uals, but of society itself. 
Again test the matter out by applying it to the 
women who are, or will be, nearest to you—your 
mother, sister, sweetheart or wife, and daughter. 
Would you prefer to see them dead rather than 
violated and dishonored? Would you die to save 
the virtue and honor of these? The question an- 
swers itself. If you are worthy of being held as 
the son, brother, husband, or father of these women, 
you cannot engage in impure sex relations without 
an offense which is at least the equal of murder as 
measured by every generous impulse of your nature. 
Socially it has very much more degrading results 
than murder. 
Young men do not like to confront this aspect 
of the question. They prefer to think of their 
sexual degradations as merely minor improprieties 
or indiscretions, which only need to be forgotten 72 
SEX AND LIFE 
to be blotted out. Unless one is a personal, moral, 
and social scrub he must apply to himself the same 
standards which he treasures for these women dear- 
est to him—the standards of thoroughbreds. 
What Should Be the Personal Sex Standards of 
Young Men? 
As we have been coming up from our animal con- 
dition the males, because of their greater strength 
and greater sex passions, have largely determined 
sex standards, at least in the earlier stages of human 
development. The result has been to demand of 
our mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters a stand- 
ard of complete sexual abstinence and to allow 
ourselves the privilege of at least occasional im- 
purity. In other words, there has arisen a “double 
standard” of sex morals, supported by some men. 
We have seen that sex indulgence is not necessary 
for the physical or mental health of either men or 
women. Furthermore, no real gentleman, when he 
once thinks his way through the problem, will feel 
that impurity in men is either honorable or just— 
to say nothing of the call of chivalry. Whatever 
is right or sound ought to become the standard of 
both sexes alike. We cannot continue to deny to 
women the sex privileges which men practice. 
Whose, then, shall be the accepted standard ? Shall 
women assume the freedom some men claim for SEX AND PERSONALITY 
73 
themselves ? Or shall men be submitted to the same 
restraint to which women are expected to submit? 
We cannot answer this question from our desires 
and appetites alone. We must answer it on the 
basis of its effect upon marriage, upon the trust 
and confidence of future husbands and wives, upon 
the permanence and fineness of the resulting home 
as a place to raise pure children and to develop to 
the best advantage all the personalities in it. This, 
indeed, is the purpose of sex: to make homes and 
to insure, so far as possible, not merely mating and 
reproduction, but the highest success, happiness, and 
human development of father, mother, and chil- 
dren. You owe your present happiness and ad- 
vantages to such home conceptions. You can easily 
figure out for yourself what kind of marital and 
parental relations would be possible—in other words 
what kind of homes would exist—if both men and 
women practiced the degree of sex indulgence 
claimed by many men. 
Human beings have in their long history experi- 
mented freely with all sorts of sex relations. The 
only device that seems to offer any permanence in 
mating, to exalt marriage, to give equal responsi- 
bility in the care of children, to conserve the home, 
and to promise the building up of the sentiments of 
love and devotion which make life worth while is 
a standard of equal and complete chastity and con- 74 
SEX AND LIFE 
tinence for men and women before marriage and 
perfect faithfulness after marriage. 
In preparation for this, the only ideal which an 
honorable young man can allow himself is one of 
entire restraint from self-indulgence. He must 
allow himself no exception. He must come to take 
the same pride in his self-control which a woman 
takes in her poise and chastity. It is out of this 
restraint and pride that the monogamous marriage, 
the home, and marital happiness come. No man can 
hold high ideals of love and parenthood and engage 
in illicit sex relations. 
Continent life, then, for men is the only life that 
is fair to women; it leads to the highest happiness 
possible to human mates; it furnishes the best stand- 
ards of parenthood; and it is the most stabilizing 
solution of the problem, yet thought out for society 
in general. 
Some Corollaries of These Standards 
If a man has made up his mind that he is going 
to be clean and chaste—and he must make up his 
mind in advance if he hopes to win—it follows that 
he must protect himself from unnecessary tempta- 
tions. For example, he cannot afford to dally with 
situations and influences that excite the sex impulses 
to the danger-point. This does not at all mean that 
one should cut himself off from the fullest comrade- SEX AND PERSONALITY 
75 
ship and companionship with young women. There 
is nothing finer and more wholesome in life than 
this. But associating with girls of doubtful or loose 
character, frequenting immoral shows, taking lib- 
erties with the bodies of girls—so-called “spooning” 
—are all sure to arouse sex passions and to make 
it difficult to maintain one’s control. A man can- 
not solve these problems in the light of his desires 
and pleasure. They must be met in the spirit of 
his chivalry for women and of his high total pur- 
pose. From the positive side one can strengthen 
one’s fight by maintaining sound health, by living 
an active physical life, by filling one’s mental and 
emotional life with worthy interests, by encouraging 
ambitions for the future that tax all one’s powers, 
and by full use of one’s best social, esthetic, moral, 
and religious ideals and convictions. 
Sex and Marriage 
There are two equally unsound and superficial 
views about sex indulgence after marriage. Many 
young men think that a life of unlimited indulgence 
is the just and natural reward for continence be- 
fore marriage. On the other extreme there are 
foolishly prudish people who claim that there should 
even in married life be intercourse only when chil- 
dren are desired. 
As a matter of fact, the sex relation between hus- 76 
SEX AND LIFE 
band and wife may be so abused by the husband 
that marriage becomes only a kind of legalized 
prostitution. Such bestiality on the part of a man 
kills all the higher and finer possibilities and de- 
stroys any chance of a real home. On the other 
hand, it is equally true that the sexual relation, 
when practiced with the consideration, sympathy, 
and devotion which are possible in marriage, has 
spiritual values far beyond the mere producing of 
children. It becomes a kind of sacrament, which 
develops an atmosphere of sympathy and affection 
in which children may be safely born and reared. 
Under such circumstances any true man will 
gladly exercise restraint when there is any reason 
—and there will often be reasons—why he should 
not indulge. He will do so for the sake of his love 
and consideration for his wife. He will grow finer 
and happier by his restraint, exactly as he may 
grow finer by spiritualizing the sex act itself. 
Furthermore, aside from the wife’s comfort al- 
together, there are exactly the same physical and 
mental and spiritual reasons for a married man as 
for an unmarried man not to be an uncontrolled 
sexual brute. 
The Highest Satisfactions of Sex 
If you have accepted what I have been trying to 
say, you will be ready to agree with me that the SEX AND PERSONALITY 
77 
highest contributions which sex may make to our 
lives are not mere satisfactions of passion, intense 
and keen as these are. The greatest, most complete 
happiness that a man’s sex can bring him comes in 
what has been called the “spiritualization” or “sub- 
limation” of sex. By this we mean those more un- 
selfish kinds of satisfaction that are inspired by sex 
and grow out of it for those who succeed in using it 
for the development of personality rather than for 
immediate and sensual gratification. These by- 
products could not come to human beings who had 
no sense of sex; nor can they come to those who look 
at it merely as a means of lustful enjoyment. They 
are by-products of passion; but they rise only when 
passion is not the object of life and when we sacri- 
fice some lower satisfaction for a higher. It is 
quite similar to the satisfaction we get from eat- 
ing. The most satisfying and happy meal you ever 
ate is not likely to be one in which you were alone 
and indulged merely in the taste of food. In all 
probability your sweetheart was on the other side 
of the table and you have not to this day any idea 
of what you ate. You could not have had the higher 
pleasure of the companionship, if you had given 
all your thought to the animal pleasure of eating. 
We can see how wonderfully true this is in 
respect to sex from the experience of most normal 
young men. Whenever a generous-minded fellow 78 
SEX AND LIFE 
of eighteen or twenty falls in love with a girl it 
makes a new man of him. He doesn’t think of his 
sweetheart as a means of gratifying his passion. 
His feeling for her, on the contrary, ennobles his 
whole attitude. In his own thought he protects 
her from unworthy touch, even of himself. His 
sex now means chivalry, protection, devotion, sacri- 
fice, the finest use of himself he can make. His 
idealism for her gives all women a claim on his 
manliness. He is never so much his very best self 
as under these conditions—nor are his satisfaction 
and happiness ever so complete. No sensual indul- 
gence can ever compare with it in satisfaction. This 
may be the permanent state of the pure man when 
married. This is the normal sex meaning, and it 
is tremendously bigger than bodily intercourse. 
Because of just this natural power to sublimate 
our sex impulses and states, sex is able to give rise 
to the highest and most humane aspects of our social 
life. Courtship, marriage, home, love of every sort 
—first of mates, then of parents for children, of 
kindred, of mankind at large—and even our best 
approach to God Himself as universal Father have 
grown out of the fact of sex and its after-effects 
in us. Most of our moral and spiritual aspirations 
and ideals, our religious impulses, and our esthetic 
nature as illustrated in literature and other arts, 
have their foundation in sex. SEX AND PERSONALITY 
79 
A man may dissipate in impure indulgence the 
superb individual sexual inheritance which he gets 
from the race and thus cut himself off from these 
higher possibilities; or he may control, guide, and 
sublimate his sex qualities for these better, more 
permanent things. He cannot do both; and he can- 
not drift into the best. It requires knowledge and 
purpose and fight. And it is about the fight that the 
real manhood grows. 
Democracy and Sex 
In the last few years an old word has come into 
our life with a new meaning. Our wonderful 
President, during this trying period of the World 
War, has brought our minds anew to an understand- 
ing that democracy is not a form of government 
merely, or of political relationship. We have come 
to know that it means nothing unless it is a part 
of the spirit of man himself. In answer to the 
President’s leadership, millions of our men have 
offered their lives as soldiers, and millions more 
both of men and women have devoted themselves 
to service, in order that democracy shall have a 
chance in the earth. And what is this thing that 
we are ready to die for and live for? Isn’t it just 
this: that no nation or no man anywhere shall be 
free to exploit for his own gratification any other 
nation or any other human being? Does it not 80 
SEX AND LIFE 
mean that all of us shall cooperate in service, to the 
end that each of us shall reach his own best develop- 
ment—not for the sake of a super-state but for 
humanity? This, it seems to me, is the thing that 
the fine young life of our nation was ready to 
pour itself out for. And now that the War has 
been won by the free peoples, does it not follow that 
we who have the advantages of a high-school and 
college education should lead in making this high 
democratic spirit rule in the life of our people? 
Now what has a reborn and renewed spirit of 
democracy to do with sex? Isn’t it again just this: 
that no one of us shall be willing to exploit another 
human being for our own satisfaction ? Is the man 
who lures and uses a girl for his own gratification 
and her shame, or who further confirms a prostitute 
in her degradation of personality, any different in 
spirit from the Potsdam gang who dishonored a 
people for self-aggrandizement? Is it any more 
autocratic to cherish a dominating lust for power 
than a dominating lust for self-indulgence ? Democ- 
racy that does not reach all the dominating pas- 
sions, that would exploit others, is not the real thing. 
It is not the democracy of generous youth who are 
coming to manhood in the wake of a war which 
has been fought that the weak may not be abused 
by the strong! 
Furthermore, democracy means that what I claim SEX AND PERSONALITY 
81 
for myself I must allow to every other person. 
Democracy makes general our individual conduct. 
No one of us has sex rights that are not equally 
right for all others—including our own dearest 
women—our mothers, sisters, daughters, and wives. 
In the democratic spirit we cannot ask of other 
women concessions that we would not freely ap- 
prove for other men in relation to our women. It 
may be that real human democracy is foolish and 
impossible. But I do not believe it; and I am sure 
you do not. We have come too far along in our 
evolution, too far in restraining the brute within us, 
too far in trying out the cooperative spirit, too far 
in getting our highest and finest joys through a 
hearty sharing of life, to go back to grossness and 
self-indulgence at the expense of others. We must 
go on; and such men as you must accept your place 
of leadership in the new democracy of humanity. 
No greater call has ever come to human beings in 
all the wonderful life of our race, and there is no 
part of this call more holy or more urgent than the 
call for democracy of sex cleanness and control. 
Religion and Sex Behavior 
One does not have to be a Christian to appreciate 
the necessity of a clean sex life. Nor is this sort 
of a life binding merely upon a religious person. 
The biological, hygienic, social, and moral elements 82 
SEX AND LIFE 
of sex furnish abundant reasons for the necessity 
of making right choices, if there were no such thing 
as Christianity. And yet it is certainly true that 
a man who believes that evolution has gone too far 
upward in human beings to have come about by 
chance; who realizes that our greatest triumphs and 
progress have come through denying our animal 
natures and by guiding our actions by unselfishness 
and devotion to others; who senses that this uni- 
verse is an orderly one and that people always suffer 
when they break the right laws of behavior— 
whether physical, mental, social, or spiritual; who 
believes that the individual is responsible to the 
universe for the best life that he can give—any 
such person has an aid in controlling impulses and 
in ordering action which may be of the greatest 
worth in his conflict. Such a person, whether he 
realizes it or not, is religious. Religion is a genu- 
ine, vital, and effective aid in right behavior. 
If one can admire the view of life which Jesus 
taught and lived and can accept His thought of 
self-control and unselfish consideration and service 
to mankind as the only way given among men 
“whereby we must be saved,” he has for his sup- 
port in sex guidance not merely the most deeply 
spiritual, but the most consistent religious motive 
yet proposed from the point of view of both psy- 
chology and philosophy. SEX AND PERSONALITY 
83 
Conclusion 
In what I have written in these four addresses 
to young men I have no thought that it is an easy 
thing for a vigorous, red-blooded young man to keep 
himself clean. I know quite well, and you are be- 
ginning to know, that there is a tremendous struggle. 
I am merely assuring you that the struggle can 
be successful, that the winning is one of the most 
worth-while things you will ever do, and that your 
most satisfying growth will come in winning the 
fight. 
Winning in this fight for mastery of your sex life 
includes, of course, that you will do what is neces- 
sary to keep your own body, mind, and attitudes 
healthy; that, as every generous and chivalrous man 
must, you will cherish pure women and help reclaim 
unfortunate ones; that you will bring to your own 
wife and children the fullest cleanness and inspira- 
tion to right sex ideals; and that you will dedicate 
yourself to the enterprise of winning mankind still 
further from animalism and social vice to purity 
and the happiness of sex control and guidance. 
Is it not a reassuring fact and an omen of success 
that the very processes going on in your body 
which give you your manly sex longings and pas- 
sions are at the same time giving you also the gen- 
erous-minded chivalry which makes you ready to 84 
SEX AND LIFE 
protect womanhood, developing the social sense that 
calls for honor and justice to your kind, and inspir- 
ing the idealism that makes you sense the profound 
value of personality as greater than any other thing 
on earth ? It is more than an accident that the same 
adolescent impulses which drive you toward lust 
produce in you those fine sublimations that tend 
both to control lust and to lead on to the greatest 
joys that humans know. Trust yourself unre- 
servedly to these your best impulses and, through 
love, become a leader in the refining evolution of 
your kind.