Little children spend much of their early time in exploring themselves and their immediate surroundings--all is mysterious, all at first unknown. Their own feet and hands, their powers of locomotion and of throwing some object to a distance, the curls of their own hair, the pain they encounter in their bodies when explorations bring them in contact with sharp angles: all are equally mysterious, together forming a wonder-world. And babies are very young indeed when they explore with all the rest of their bodies, the rudiments of those of their racial organs with which they can acquaint themselves. _In my opinion, the attitude of a man or woman through life is largely determined by the attitude adopted by the mother towards the racial organs_ BEFORE _the child was old enough consciously to remember any instruction that was imparted_.
Advice is often given in these more enlightened days to instruct your boy or girl in his racial power or duties when he or she is ten or twelve years old. This to many seems very young, and they hesitate and defer it till they are older and "can understand better." In my opinion, this is already eight or ten years too late.
_The child's first instruction in its attitude towards its sex organs, its first account of the generation of human beings, should be given when it is two or three years old_; given with other instruction, of which it is still too young to comprehend more than part, but which it is nevertheless old enough to comprehend in part. Very simple instruction given reverently at suitable opportunities at that early age will impress itself upon the very _texture_ of the child's mind, before the time of actual memories, so that from the very first possible beginnings its tendencies are in the direction of truth and reverent understanding.
_A child so tiny will usually not remember one word of what was said to it, but the effects on his outlook will be deep._ For at that early age, children are meditatively absorbing and being impressed by the psychological states and feelings of their instructors and companions, and if, in these very earliest months, the mother or guardian makes the mistake of treating ribaldly the tiny organs or of speaking lightly in the child's presence, or of directly lying to the child about these facts, that child receives a mental warp and injury which nothing can ever eradicate entirely, which may in later years through bitter and befouling experiences be lived down as an old scar that has healed, but which will have permanently injured it.