Page:Fielding - Sex and the Love Life.pdf/21

Rh The children have by no means been the only victims in this respect. They have carried their lamentable traditions, so long socially approved, over into adulthood, and handed them down much as they had received them. Thus the cycle was perpetuated.

No one can estimate the damage that has been done by the traditional practice of placing a ban on knowledge concerning the sex side of life. Physicians, lawyers and others who are constantly brought into intimate touch with the private affairs of their patients and clients, know that the lives of untold numbers of men and women have been ruined by lack of understanding of their sexual nature, and that innumerable marriages have been shattered by a basic ignorance of sex problems.

There is no denying this fact, however much people will insist upon evading the issue and closing their eyes to the results.

Fortunately, there is a beautiful and constructive side to the problems we must face. Consequently it is only here and there that we need to touch upon and recur to the evils that have come about so largely through the mistaken policy of silence upon some of the most vital facts of life.

What can be a more fascinating and instructive story than the marvel of nature in its methods to assure the continuance of life on earth, and the preservation of the species!

In a felicitous moment, Dr. G. Stanley Hall summed the thought up in these words: "The history of the world is, at root, a love story." By this is meant history in its broadest sense—life history, or biological history—and not merely political history, or the stories of nationalistic and racial groups, their struggles, development and conquests and their decline and failures (when they speak of them).