In all these fields the problems of sex are involved. Men and women who desire to bear their whole burden as members of a progressive society must contribute to the solution of these great social problems, and to do this wisely must know something about the basic facts of sex life.[32]
The first and basic part of sex education is bodily regimen: children and youth must live an abundant, vigorous, wholesome physical life.[33] Cities have threatened to be the "graves of the human species" in this respect. Sedentary life chokes and misdirects the currents of nervous energy and the very circulation of the blood. The lad who plays vigorously, even violently; who can "get his second wind," turn a handspring, do a good cross-country run, swim the river, possesses a great bulwark of defense against sexual vice, especially in its secret forms.
The revival of play, of play for all, boys and girls, weak as well as strong, is one of the most hopeful movements on foot to-day. Let us base our promotions from grade to grade, and especially for "graduation" from school, partly upon physical tests, requiring each student to make of himself physically, not a record-breaking athlete, but the best that can be made out of the stuff in him.
Food, sleep, clothing, bathing, fresh air,--all these are vital also; whatever turns the flow and thrill of life into wholesome channels, abolishes indolence, stagnation, morbidity, and fosters abundance of bodily life,--such is the regimen of sex health.
No bodily regimen can be effective without mental control. Nowhere does mind affect body more immediately and powerfully than in the realm of sex. The educator has two great tasks in this respect: first to improve the general environment in which the young must live and develop. As things are, our streets, store-windows, books and magazines, and especially public amusements, such as theaters and dance halls, abound in sexual suggestion and stimulation.[34] These agencies stimulate an excessive stream of sexual desire, with all its physical accompaniments, in boys and men: the natural and inevitable result is an overwhelming impulse toward illicit satisfaction in self-abuse or sexual immorality. Society in self-defense and the interest of its youth must wage war upon this mercenary exploiting of the sex impulse. Licentious thinking is the great foe of continence; the saying of Jesus may be paraphrased thus with physiological correctness: "He that looketh upon a woman to lust after her hath already committed the sexual act in his _nervous system_."