Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. Sexuality lx Childhood. Sexual Vice -- Difficulties in Coping With -- Analysis of, in Humanity -- Sexual Vice in Animals -- Among Children -- Methods of Dealing With -- Hygiene -- Moral Suasion -- Teaching -- Punishments. Methods of coping with the huge evil of sexual impurity, by legislative and other measures, have usually the fault of beginning to work at the circumference of the phenomenon, on the false theory that the center and heart of it can thus be reached. To suppose that adequate remedies of this class of evils will be found in clearing the streets of children and young people after a certain hour, in getting up entertainments, checking the sale of sensuous pictures and promoting other surface measures, is to fall into a fatuous error. It would be as rational to think that we could curb the violence of a volcanic, eruption by carting away a little of the refuse and scoria on the outskirts of the scene of disturbance, while the cone in the center, waxing ever hotter and more furious, continued to discharge vaster supplies of fiery matter. In the present order of things it may well be doubted whether any legislator will arise capable of framing adequate laws for the treatment of sexual misdemeanors and follies. Legislation has here to cope with an adversary so subtle that save for partial success at a few points, legislative efforts must recoil baffled. Let us not, then, attempt to satisfy our consciences by the promotion of mere surface measures; not indeed that they are in every case entirely useless, but they deal with symptoms and effects rather than with causes. Let us investigate beyond these, and try to press nearer the heart of the question, welcoming whatever help and guidance can be obtained, from the light of revelation and the l...