>yAND
^
.y
Yrj.
C^x -^C4-sfr%A^d
-h
aw/D
?
Tl^u JF7^
inus-CA-j.
»/x '"
-<r.
°\
INNOCENCE
AND
IGNORANCE
Innocence and Ignorance
INNOCENCE
AND
IGNORANCE
BY
M. S. GILLET, O. P.
TRANSLATED, WITH FOREWORD, BY
J. ELLIOT ROSS, C. S. P., Ph. D.
LECTURER IN ETHICS AT NEWMAN HALL, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS
NEW YORK
THE DEVIN-ADAIR COMPANY
LOAN STACK
Copyright, 1017, by
THE DEVIN-ADAIR COMPANY
Authorized Translation
All rights reserved by the Devin- Adair Co.
40- 5-^
S-Si-2.
TO
D. L. M.
MODEL OF PURITY AND TRUTH
WHO HAS LIVED
THE PRINCIPLES OF THIS BOOK
THIS TRANSLATION IS DEDICATED
AS A SLIGHT TOKEN OF LOVE AND ESTEEM
987
Jlifnl (Bbxtat
Remigius Lafort, S. T. D.
Censor
imprimatur
«£«John Cardinal Farley
Archbishop of New York
CONTENTS
PAGE
Foreword ....... ix
Preface ........ xvii
CHAPTER
I. The Scientific Method and Educating to
Purity: Scientific initiation pure and sim-
ple; insufficiency of all intellectual initia-
tion; dangers of a scientific initiation
properly so called .... 3
II. Moral Training to Purity and the Scientific
Method: Moral education and chastity;
sexual pedagogy; moral education and sci-
entific initiation ..... 29
III. The Method of Silence and the Method of
Common Sense: The method of silence
for training to purity; reciprocal influence
of nature and of grace in training to
purity; the sentiment of modesty in edu-
cating to purity ..... 68
IV. Ignorance of To-day and Innocence of To-
morrow: Social facts and innocence; in-
definite knowledge and innocence . . 117
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ^ PAGE
V. A Tentative Programme of Educating to
Purity According to the Common-sense
Method: Negative education in purity
and the social sources of corruption;
positive education in purity — individual
method ; positive education in purity — col-
lective method . • i. . .139
FOREWORD
Innocence and Ignorance — the combina-
tion may be tragic! Some months ago there
came to my attention a striking illustration
of how pitiable may be the consequences of
this unfortunate union. A young woman of
eighteen or so, educated in a convent, was
persuaded by her mother to marry a certain
man who was considered in society to be in
every way a desirable "catch." What was
her horror to find what marriage really meant
— the essence of the contract she had made as
an act of filial piety!
After months of bitter degradation with a
diseased brute, she left the man and is now
supporting herself by hard work. Had she
not been ignorant as well as innocent, she
x FOREWORD
would never have entered into any such agree-
ment with any man, much less with this par-
ticular one. She would have consecrated her-
self to God in some religious community.
Now she cannot. Her life is ruined. Con-
vents are closed to her, and she must even
bear the stigma of being a divorcee.
This is an unusual case. But it is not as
unusual as many will suppose. And because
it is not as unusual as it should be, and for
other reasons, we have thought it wise to give
to the American public this work by an emi-
nent French Dominican on a topic of the
greatest importance — education to purity.
Young women have a right to be protected
against any such false step as was forced upon
this innocent girl through her ignorance. It
was not the less false that it was sanctioned
by society's laws. For it is a crime, compara-
ble, perhaps, only to actual seduction, to al-
low our young girls to enter into such an
FOREWORD xi
intimate and wide-reaching relationship with
a man without knowing exactly what they are
doing. The consequences are too grave for
themselves, for their husbands, and for the
possible children. Love may be blind, but
he should not be blindfolded in this way.
And men, too, have a right to be protected
against the ignorance of women in such mat-
ters. More matrimonial infelicity than we
shall ever know is caused by uncongeniality
in this regard, which might have been avoid-
ed had the woman /understood beforehand
what would be expected of her. She may re-
sign herself after she is once in this position,
but she cannot completely hide her disgust,
and men of a certain temperament will be
unsatisfied, if not suspicious and jealous.
On the other hand, young men or young
women should know, to some extent, what
they are giving up if they become priests or
religious. Consecration to God should be
xii FOREWORD
full and knowing. There should be no vain
regrets aroused by knowledge after it is too
late honorably to change.
These considerations argue in favor of tell-
ing all children about the facts of life. It
might be wiser, had we the disposition of af-
fairs, to arrange some other way of perpetu-
ating the human race. But as God designed
this particular and only method, we think that
young people growing up have a right to
know of it, and that those to whom they are
entrusted have the duty of enlightening them
in a frank, pure, intelligent way. This duty
binds even in the case of those who might be
kept in ignorance. All children should be
told, for the reasons that we have stated.
But in case these reasons should not appear
convincing to some persons, Abbe Gillet goes
in detail into another and clinching argument.
It is not, he shows, a question of keeping chil-
dren in ignorance of sexual facts or of telling
FOREWORD xiii
them everything. Rather it is a question of
who shall tell them — vicious companions or
pure, truth-loving lips of parents or educa-
tors. He effectually punctures the theory,
hugged so tightly by some credulous parents,
that the average child can for very long in
these days be kept in ignorance on this point.
Between the street, the newspaper, magazines,
the theatre, the "movies," companions, picture
galleries, museums, and dozens of other ave-
nues that arouse and satisfy his curiosity, it
is quixotic to imagine that any but an unusual
child will long remain without some knowl-
edge on these dangerous and inflammatory
subjects.
Some children, it is true, will go through
these dangers and never be enlightened. They
will have eyes and see not, ears and hear not.
But they will be exceptions, and it is impos-
sible to tell beforehand which they will be.
It is a certain spirit of God that breatheth
xiv FOREWORD
where it listeth, and the child who possesses
that spirit assuredly will not be hurt by a
reasonable explanation from his mother's lips.
No harm will be done in enlightening these
children in the attempt to safeguard those who
need knowledge.
If, then, knowledge is ordinarily bound to
come, it is best that it should come from those
interested in the spiritual welfare of the child.
Abbe Gillet, therefore, advocates a common-
sense explanation, by parents or teachers or
confessors, that will be adapted to the indi-
vidual child. This explanation should not go
into scientific details, as if each child were
a student of gynecology; it should not be col-
lective; it should not be the same for all,
nor always given at the same age. Because
what is told, and how it is told, must vary
from child to child.
Abbe Gillet does not give a typical initia-
tion. There are no typical cases. Each one
FOREWORD xv
is individual, and we must leave to the good
sense of the parent, or other person charged
with the education of the child, the duty of
adapting to his individual needs the necessary
information.
And accompanying this initiation into the
mysteries of life, there should be a well
thought out moral education strengthening the
will of the child to resist the allurements of
sense. Prayer, church-going, the Sacraments,
must all conduce to this end of building char- #
acter. Piety and religion must be developed,
not pietism or religiosity.
Abbe Gillet, the author of this excellent
essay on training in purity, is an eminent
French Dominican. He has occupied sev-
eral important and responsible positions in
his Order and has written extensively on edu-
cational subjects. One of his books, The Edu-
cation of Character, has recently been trans-
lated into English, and forms a worthy sup-
xvi FOREWORD
plement to the present important topic. After
years of experience as a teacher and a con-
fessor, he speaks with authority upon this
question.
J. Elliot Ross, C.S.P.
The Newman Club, University of Texas,
PREFACE
The subject of training in* purity, ap-
proached from the Christian point of view,
presupposes that this question was first stated
in all its distinctness by our Lord. Princi-
ples for its solution are contained in Scripture
and tradition, and no new conclusion can con-
tradict these principles. Let us content our-
selves with stating them.
It is certain, according to the teaching of
faith, that chastity is a gift of God. "I knew
that I could not otherwise be continent, un-
less God gave it." 1 We receive this gift upon
the day of our Baptism, together with sanc-
tifying grace and all infused virtues; we re-
cover it by Penance when in the course of
our lives we have had the misfortune to lose
it. St. Paul also tells us that chastity is a
fruit of the Holy Spirit. 2
But how can we preserve and develop this
xvii
xviii PREFACE
supernatural grace of continence? Above all,
by what supernatural means of the same or-
der as itself? "Watch and pray," says our
Lord, "lest ye enter into temptation; for the
spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak." 3 St.
Peter tells us: "Be sober and watch, for your
adversary the devil goeth about like a roar-
ing lion, seeking whom he may devour." 4
The whole Christian tradition, by the voice
of the Fathers, theologians, mystics, and as-
cetics, has propounded these evangelical and
apostolic principles and has insisted upon
them. Apart from these principles, no train-
ing in purity is possible.
But if it be beyond doubt that chastity is
a gift of God, a fruit of the Holy Spirit; if
it be not less evident that without prayer and
the frequentation of the Sacraments we can-
not preserve and develop this delicate flower
of purity; yet it remains to determine just
in what precisely consists the vigilance recom-
mended upon this point by our Lord.
In the first place, nothing should be over-
looked that can in any way taint chastity. Its
PREFACE xix
domain extends not merely to impure acts, but
to words, desires, and even to thoughts, where
impurity has its origin. Further, our vigil-
ance should be the greater because original
sin has created in us the fire of concupiscence, #r
spoken of by the Fathers and the Scriptures,
by reason of which we are inclined to seek
the pleasures of the flesh at the expense of the
joys of the spirit.
There is no Christian soul so holy that,
placing its trust in its own strength, it can
ever dispense with watchfulness in these mat-
ters. But how should one exercise this Chris-
tian vigilance, especially over children who
are beginning to use their reason, and whose
will, although supernaturalized by grace and
the possession of a divine power of resisting
the suggestions of the flesh, has not yet had
time fully to assimilate this force by a cor-
responding activity?
Such is the problem presented to-day with
greater force than ever, it seems, to the minds
of Catholic educators alive to their respon-
sibilities.
xx PREFACE
We hear it maintained by some men that
the Christian tradition is useless, that knowl-
edge is completely sufficient, and that by en-
lightening children at an early age about the
whole subject of chastity we shall make them
practise this virtue and avoid the contrary
vice.
But nothing is more false. This scientific
method, pure and simple, of initiation is
neither Christian nor natural. It is not natu-
ral because the experience of all time abun-
dantly proves that it is not enough to know
the good in order to do it, and that to learn
of evil, without having first gained by appro-
priate education of the will the power to re-
sist its allurement, is to put one's self in the
proximate occasion of falling. But particu-
larly is this method not Christian; for it at-
tributes to purely human means a preventive
value that belongs of right only to supernatu-
ral means, such as the grace of God, prayer,
and the Sacraments. All Christian psychol-
ogists, from the Fathers of the Church to the
PREFACE xxi
most recent ascetic writers, are unanimous
upon this point.
It can even be asserted without fear of con-
tradiction that the Christian tradition has al-
ways been opposed to a knowledge of such
things given apart from the proper time, place,
and person; and that in what concerns the
training of children in purity, it prefers igno-
rance to knowledge.
Here, however, we must guard against all
exaggeration and prejudiced interpretations. J*
Two rocks are to be avoided. Under pre-^/^
text that children have received from God the
grace of purity, one may say: "God's grace
is sufficient, and there is no danger in en-
lightening children at a tender age upon a
problem as delicate and complex as that of
chastity: the divine strength will supplant
their human weakness in the face of such reve-
lations." Or, going to the opposite extreme, £
some one else may say: "Since children have ^*
received from God the supernatural virtue of ™
chastity, let grace work in them. Take no
account of the demands of their nature ; their
/
xxii PREFACE
innocence will protect them and they will de-
velop under the safeguard of their ignorance."
The truth is between these extremes, and to
realize this it is only necessary to reflect that
if grace perfects our nature, it does not sup-
press it. Indeed, so far from suppressing it,
grace, on the contrary, adapts itself to na-
ture's laws in order to assimilate nature and
to be assimilated. Grace is a supernatural
means that enables nature to rise above itself
without ceasing to be itself.
Therefore it is clear that, from the point
of view of morals, the education of the will of
children should precede that of the intellect.
This is especially true where, as in the case
of chastity, knowledge does not give power,
but rather weakens the will if it is not suffi-
ciently strong to resist the suggestions of the
"knowledge of good and evil." It follows
that, just so far as the will of a child has not
been armed by a complete Christian educa-
^ tion beginning with the cradle and continued
through life, ignorance is preferable to knowl-
^ edge.
y
PREFACE xxiii
But when a child's will, by constant super-
natural action, has been formed to resistance, ( h L4
. s
does it follow that in every case ignorance
should be supplanted by knowledge? The re-
ply to this question is not theoretical, but
practical. And this reply is the subject of *
this book.
We shall try to show, in the light of the ^
psychology of St. Thomas, that in every case
scientific investigation, whether individual or
collective, upon matters of chastity is unneces-
sary; and that in each case it is dangerous,
especially on account of the technical crudity
and universality of method, that does not take
into account the individual and relative needs
of children.
Further, we shall endeavor to prove that ty
systematic ignorance, which on its side takes
no notice of the relative and individual needs
of the children, no matter what the circum-
stances, is exposed to serious miscalculations,
especially in these difficult times when the
dangers of a vicious initiation, despite all
vigilance, multiply about the path of children.
xxiv PREFACE
Finally, our idea is that, in the field of pur-
C) ity, the natural educators of the child — his
parents — or, in their default, those upon whom
falls the care of his soul, ought to guard his
ignorance in so far as his will is not suffi-
ciently prepared to resist the movements of
the flesh that may come from a precocious
initiation; but we think that, for children
who have enjoyed a complete and methodical
Christian education of the will, a sensible in-
itiation ought to replace ignorance, whenever
the need manifests itself, and upon the ex-
press condition that this initiation be graded
to real and not imaginary needs, having in each
case a strictly individual character, and sup-
plementing a firm Christian education, in
which supernatural means always take prece-
dence of purely natural ones.
M.-S. GlLLET, O.P.
1 Wisdom vii, 21.
2 Gal. v, 23.
3 Mark xiv, 38.
4 I Pet. v, 8.
INNOCENCE
AND
IGNORANCE
CHAPTER I
THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD AND EDUCATING TO
PURITY
OF the educators who have approached
this question of training in purity, two
classes especially claim our attention: the ad-
vocates of a scientific initiation pure and sim-
ple and the defenders of absolute ignorance.
We believe that both classes have assumed an
exclusive and irreconcilable attitude in re-
gard to a problem particularly remarkable
for its complexity, and the individual and col-
lective solution of which is capable of an in-
finity of shades. This will appear better from
the exposition we shall give of these contra-
dictory methods. The first will be the way
of "initiation."
4 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
/. Scientific Initiation Pure and Simple
Among the advocates of a method of intel-
lectual initiation into the domain of purity,
we encounter on the ground floor, as it were,
the defenders of a scientific initiation pure
and simple, individual and collective, with-
out distinction of age or sex. It is true that
at present these partisans are rare. But the
cries they raise about their method, though
doomed to impotence by their radicalism, are
so loud that they force themselves upon the
attention of the most indifferent.
According to Dr. Doleris, of the Academy
of Medicine, training in purity through sci-
ence is the "only practical and legitimate"
method. He sustained this thesis in a report
presented in August, 1910, to the Third Inter-
national Congress of School Hygiene, and
again in February, 191 1, before the principal
members of the Societe Franchise de Philoso-
phic. 1
"Undoubtedly we should," he writes, "dis-
tribute the elements of this education accord-
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 5
ing to age and environment, the gradation fol-
lowing the development of reason and in-
terest"; but the ideal is "to initiate ahead of
instinct, so as to leave no room for surprise and
fear when the organs manifest their vitality
and the senses and imagination awaken on ac-
count of these manifestations." 2
But who should give this scientific teaching?
Notwithstanding its antiquity and the senti-
mental reasons in its favor, Dr. Doleris does
not believe in the efficiency, or even the prac-
tical possibility, of family education. "I be-
lieve that we shall easily agree," he declares,
"if, completely recognizing t?he theoretical
possibility of an excellent sexual education by
the family method, we remark that to give it
would require reflective, intelligent, culti-
vated, and competent parents. That this con-
dition is not fulfilled in the majority of fam-
ilies cannot readily be denied, and the reason
for this is understood." 3 •
Since family education, therefore, is prac-
tically impossible, school education must be
substituted; and for scientific individual ini-
6 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
tiation we must have scientific collective ini-
tiation. And how should the instructors,
qualified to give this scientific and collective
teaching in the schools, go about their task?
"The point is, then, by the early teaching of
the natural sciences (which should be a pri-
mary element of the new education), to accus-
tom children to the phenomena of generation,
to make them observe them first in regard to
plants, and afterwards in animals." 4 And Dr.
Doleris thinks that there is no objection to the
smallest child being initiated into the less tech-
nical details of such an education.
Is this all? Of course not. We must join
to this early teaching of the natural sciences
"some distractions and occupations that tire
the body while at the same time opening up
perspectives of activity and will-power. In
short, it naturally implies giving a large place
to hygiene." 5
Natural sciences, sports, hygiene — behold,
according to a contemporary medical author-
ity, the essentials of the new way of training to
purity!
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 7
But what of moral education, properly so
called? some one may ask. Dr. Doleris does
not attach much importance to this, since it
concerns abnormal children. For those un-
stable natures in whom a precise knowledge
of things hardly inspires a clear, simple, and
natural conception of the sexual life (but who,
doubtless, are rather numerous), "it is neces-
sary to have a solid moral education, which
alone is capable of protecting them against
certain temptations." 6
For normal children — by definition the ma-
jority — the scientific initiation suffices. Dr.
Doleris does not forbid completing this by
moral education; but he has more confidence
in athletics than in moral counsels.
This theory has at least one merit — that it
is stated frankly and clearly. But, in the light
of a sane psychology of childhood, what value
has it? Let us say at once that even in the
Societe Franchise de Philosophie, where it
was presented, this theory found no echo.
Neither M. Durkheim, nor M. Bureau, nor
M. Parode, nor M. Malapert, nor M. Luto-
8 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
slawski, who took part in the discussion,
agreed with the radical conclusion of Dr.
Doleris.
Doubtless their own views on this delicate
subject should be examined cautiously, as we
shall soon see. But the point is that they all
reject the scientific method, pure and sim-
ple, of initiation as inefficient and dangerous.
And in this they are evidently correct.
Why? Let us show briefly.
In the first place, it is not pretended that
to give moral value to the practice of chas-
tity no previous knowledge of the general ob-
ject of this virtue is needed. Chastity does
not escape, in its practice, the essential laws
of human activity. Nothing is willed that is
not known, says the Proverb; and it speaks
truly. We can will nothing in a human way
— that is to say, freely — without knowledge;
and the moral value of our voluntary acts de-
pends in a certain measure upon the knowl-
edge which accompanies them. This, preserv-
ing due proportion, is just as true of children
as of mature men; and the law applies just
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 9
as well to chastity as to any other virtue. Par-
ticularly and always we assert that knowledge
is a condition of morality, or, if one prefers,
of liberty of our acts. Not, indeed, scientific
knowledge, strictly speaking (since I am op-
posed to that) , but at least the general knowl-
edge which insures the substantial value of
every human act, and permits, without enter-
ing into any technical detail proper to the vir-
tue of chastity, advertence to the fact that
there is question of this virtue and of no
other.
How, then, can children, arrived at the age
of reason, practise chastity, and acquire this
virtue positively and gradually, if they have
no idea, even general, of the object with which
it is concerned; if, for example, they do not
suspect that there are certain thoughts, cer-
tain desires, certain acts, from which, for love
of God, they should abstain?
One can doubtless explain how, by the help
of ignorance, exceptional children, and even
older persons, have preserved their "inno-
cence." One may even ask if the maintenance
no INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
of this conserving ignorance for the longest
time possible would not be preferable to all
intellectual initiation, no matter how sooth-
ing? For scarcely any one denies the danger
in these inflammable matters.
This is a question to which we shall return,
for it deserves discussion. But for the time
being this is not the point. We are concerned
with finding out only whether the acquisition
or development of the natural virtue of chas-
tity is or is not conditioned by a knowledge,
at least general, of the object of this virtue.
Now who will dare to pretend that chastity
enjoys an absolutely special privilege; that
it is not at all subject to the fundamental
laws of human activity; and that the will can,
upon this extremely delicate point, direct the
sensibility without itself being orientated by
a certain knowledge, just as attenuated as you
wish, of the end to be realized and the means
to be employed? The will by its nature is
blind, as are all the instincts. If it must di-
rect its efforts in a given objective direction,
such as chastity, and by the repetition of
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE n
proper and determined acts get the habit of
naturally acting in that way, which is the
characteristic of every acquired virtue, it is
very necessary that there should be some
knowledge of the object, although this knowl-
edge be reduced to the minimum.
I know very well that some educators speak
of an innocence preserved by ignorance, and
I do not contradict them. But this negative
innocence has nothing in common with posi-
tive innocence begotten in the acquired virtue
of chastity. Here I merely allude to this.
I shall explain its mechanism later, in show-
ing the important role it plays in the develop-
ment even of the infused or supernatural vir-
tues. 7
One thing more. I do not for a moment
propose to decide whether it is better, from
the educational point of view, to prefer nega-
tive innocence, founded on ignorance, to posi-
tive innocence, requiring a previous intellec-
tual "initiation." I merely contend that it is
a mistake to confound these two things, and
that in case one has decided to teach children
12 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
who have reached the age of reason to prac-
tise the virtue of chastity, he cannot leave
them in complete ignorance of the object of
this virtue.
Upon this point I am in agreement with
Dr. Doleris, and probably with all psycholo-
gists, but upon this point only. For I do not
grant that intellectual initiation in this mat-
ter, less even than in any other, has by itself
an educational value, and that this initiation
ought necessarily to be scientific.
On the contrary, I hope to prove that all
intellectual initiation, in big or little doses,
is by itself insufficient, and that particularly
the scientific initiation which does not appeal
to a strong moral education will be not only
insufficient, but dangerous.
II. Insufficiency of all Intellectual Initiation
It is a long while since Socrates first main-
tained that the practice of good is connected
with our knowledge as effect to cause. But,
since then, experience has contradicted this
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 13
theory. Practically, indeed, "the better" does
not determine us, and virtue is not to be con-
founded with the determination of our will by
the realizing of "the better" as understood by
Leibnitz.
In the eighteenth century the Encyclope-
dists brought back, in a metaphysical form,
this brilliant doctrinal paradox. Ideologists,
they denied that customs react upon laws, and
maintained that it pertained to laws to reform
morals; that it is sufficient to cut off or add
a few statutes to change at one stroke the
moral appearance of a people.
One of them, Helvetius — the most naive, we
must grant — has even inquired if the differ-
ences between the individuals of the human
race do not prove a difference in the instruc-
tion received; and he asks if virtues, like phi-
losophy or mathematics, cannot be taught. Per-
haps one would be tempted to believe that our
modern society, so stricken with experiences,
has made short work of such Utopias. Unfor-
tunately, it has done nothing of the sort. In
the majority of our universities, and elsewhere
H INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
also, though in a lesser degree, it is still im-
agined that moral education can be accom-
plished with text-books and some precepts
learned by heart. Let the advocates of such
theories read on this subject the excellent work
of M. Delvolve on the two types of educa-
tion most in vogue to-day: the religious type
and the secular type. 8 They will see with
what force he denounces the exclusively in-
tellectual character and inefficiency of the
secular class.
There is, indeed, a rather generally accept-
ed opinion among secular educators — at least
an analysis of official texts relative to moral
teaching allows us to affirm this — that the es-
sential function of the educational doctrine
is to determine particular duties, to propose
them with precision, scientifically to justify
them by deducing from their only objective
some abstract rules of conduct, without de-
manding a foundation, more or less exterior,
for duty itself, a motive capable of determin-
ing the will and, through it, of acting upon
the senses.
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 15
What has moral education, thus defined in
its doctrines and methods, given for practical
application? M. Delvolve asserts that it has
afforded a certain disillusionment, and one
perceives under his fearless though reserved
pen the big word "failure."
No ; it does not suffice to know good in or-
der to practise it, nor to enunciate rules based
on mere scientific assertions in order effica-
ciously to influence conduct. To the moral
rule which enlightens the intellect it is neces-
sary to join the moral motive which moves the
will, and through it bring the senses into sub-
jection. Doubtless the idea expressed in a
rule inclines towards the act as indicating the
course to follow; but it belongs to the will,
under the decisive influence of a motive, to
place itself in line for the realization of the
idea. The idea seen must become an idea
willed; the intellectual concept must become a
moving force. Now this can only happen by
the will assimilating the idea, and in this
process, giving it the force for thus acting, it
is necessary to assimilate the rule in question
16 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
and strictly to subordinate one's conduct to it.
The contribution of voluntary feeling is, in
this sense, much more important than intel-
lectual initiation, no matter in what degree.
I add that in all that concerns the practice
of chastity, the education of the will is far
preferable to the education of the intellect.
Of what are we talking, indeed, if not of
keeping the senses within the bounds of al-
lowable satisfaction? Certainly, satisfaction
of this kind is lawful in marriage. But, out-
side of marriage, no one can maintain, in the
name of science and experience, that a nor-
mal individual — that is, one in possession of
his liberty — is ever overcome despite himself
by the impulses of a physiological instinct.
This instinct is not a need, in a strict sense of
the word, but merely an aptitude. One can
even show in support of this position that its
genesis is not physiological, but psychic. The
imagination plays a much greater role than the
senses. Now this observation is important,
and fraught with consequences for the point
of view we hold.
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 17
Indeed, if the sexual instinct, in what con-
cerns the pleasure attached to its exercise, is
nourished especially by the imagination, can
one understand how training in purity ought
to consist entirely in a scientific initiation
which has for its effect precisely the awaken-
ing of the imagination, of filling it with im-
ages capable of feeding this instinct by ex-
citing the senses?
For we should not forget that every emotion
which penetrates the field of consciousness in-
clines to the corresponding act so long as no
obstacle intervenes. But where can we find
an obstacle in the hypothesis of a scientific in-
itiation pure and simple such as is proposed
by Dr. Doleris to the exclusion of the moral
education of the will? Are the senses, then,
directly subject to the intellect, without the
entrance of the will? And will the fact of
showing to the eyes of children all the details
of the practice of purity be, without anything
else, a direct safeguard for their innocence?
What simplicity!
I understand very well that one may seek
1 8 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
in sports and hygiene a counterpoise to the
possibility of excitement coming from such
an exposition, and that one should at the same
time denounce to children the dangers of
incontinence. But we should not forget, mean-
while, what Foerster remarks, that all teaching
of this kind reveals not only dangers but pleas-
ures also, and that to renounce the pleasures
it is necessary to possess not only a sufficiently
instructed intellect, but a sufficiently strong
will. 9
Now, a strong will is not simply a matter of
athletics and hygiene. Even the fear of the
dangers that misbehavior contains may disap-
pear completely through the hope of escap-
ing them, by all sorts of means, if the imagina-
tion be gripped. In certain regiments, upon
the arrival of recruits, the major is called upon
to initiate them, without sparing their feel-
ings, into the dangers to which they expose
themselves if they indulge in sexual pleasures.
Nine times out of ten — and I am not sure that
there are any exceptions, or, if there are, that
they^ are due to this official warning — nine
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 19
times out of ten the recruits seek out the pleas-
ure, after being previously informed as to
the means of avoiding the danger. The mere
hope of the pleasure that has been revealed to
them, without taking care to strengthen their
wills, has captivated them.
To make a will strong there is required an
appropriate moral education; that is, an edu-
cation embracing powerful motives for resist-
ing the attraction of the senses and a methodi-
cal training of the will. This is why, I repeat
(and I shall return to it again), the education
of the will in the field of chastity is far prefer-
able to the education of the intellect. Abso-
lutely speaking, it ought to precede; after-
wards, when there is question of an intellectual
initiation of children in these matters, it ought
always to accompany.
Ill, Dangers of a Scientific Initiation prop-
erly so called
To avoid the dangers that I am going to
point out in a scientific initiation pure and
20 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
simple, excluding moral education, Dr. Do-
leris thinks he can range children in two
classes — the normal and the abnormal, the ma-
jority and the exceptions. The abnormal
would be "those unstable natures in whom the
precise knowledge of the facts cannot inspire
a clear, simple, natural view of sexual life.
For these abnormal children (certainly rather
numerous), I add, there is needed above all a
solid moral education, which alone is capable
of preserving them from certain tempta-
tions." 10
But if one denies the distinction and proves
that so far as concupiscence is concerned we
are all abnormal, what becomes of the thesis
of scientific initiation? It falls of itself . Now,
in fact, we are all here abnormal; that is,
appealing to reason and to faith, we are all
born with an "unstable" nature, incapable of
resisting, without the help of a naturally, or
rather supernaturally, strengthened will, the
attractions of sense.
This, then, is what must be established in
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 21
order to undermine the scientific method, pure
and simple, of initiation.
First, let us consult reason.
The primary point that strikes one upon
approaching this question of training to purity
is the mysterious and sacred character envelop-
ing it. If we are concerned, for instance, with
the problem of alcoholism and some analogous
crime, we do not take the same precautions.
Why this difference of attitude?
Dr. Doleris announces this axiom, that the
mysterious character attributed by public
opinion and by religious faiths to all that con-
cerns the "secret chapter" is nothing but a
mere prejudice in no way corresponding with
the reality. 11
However, as M. Durkheim, whose author-
ity is very weighty in these matters, remarks,
"if this is a survival, it is a survival from a
singularly distant past, and of customs peculi-
arly tenacious." But when a universal sen-
timent is persistently affirmed through the
whole course of history, we can be sure that it
is founded on fact. Ideas of such generality
22 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
cannot be due merely to an aberration or to
a deceit practised upon mankind for centuries.
Now it is remarkable that not only the
Catholic religion, but the most primitive and
the most gross religions are unanimous in con-
sidering the domain of chastity as a field re-
served, and the acts relative to the propaga-
tion of the race as important, solemn, reli-
gious. It would not enter the mind, there-
fore, of a well-informed psychologist to treat
them flippantly, and to see in the sentiment
of modesty which accompanies them merely
a prejudice of religious education.
What, then, does this ancient and universal
sentiment teach?
It teaches the social importance of these
acts that it envelops with mystery. The ac-
complishment of these acts, and the pleasure
attaching to them, pass far beyond individual
limits. Consequently, one may ask if the mere
idea of these acts and of the unique pleasure
which they cause does not place the individ-
uals in a state of manifest inferiority from
the point of view of the resistance they are
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 23
bound to oppose to them outside of certain
legal conditions where their accomplishment
and seeking are lawful?
For if it is understandable that an indi-
vidual resist the pleasure of intoxication or
of suicide, which are individual pleasures
clearly immoral, it is less to ask that he con-
tinually defend himself against the attraction
of a pleasure to which nature has attached
an unequalled intensity and a wonderful so-
cial mission, since it is capable of assuring the
perpetuity of the race against designs of the
sensual egoism of its members.
I repeat, in the name of science and experi-
ence, that the physiological instinct to which
these acts and this pleasure correspond is not
a need, in the root sense of the word, but sim-
ply an aptitude; in other words, it is possible
for a young man to guard absolute chastity
without blemish. But this is on condition that
his will be in a state to resist the idea of sen-
sual pleasure, by the aid of motives stronger
even than this pleasure, and by an appropri-
ate moral gymnastic. Now, is this the case
24 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
with children and young people whose scien-
tific initiation has advanced faster than the
education of the will?
It would be childish to deny that their age
and their explosive sensibility place them in
a condition of notable inferiority. Not having
had the time to acquire strength of will by
reflection and exercise, scientific initiation
pure and simple risks delivering them, bound
hand and foot, to the attractions of sense.
They all, under this head, belong to the "ab-
normal," in that a clear, detailed, and tech-
nical conception of the mechanism of sense
will not alone guarantee them against falls.
What more is to be said of a theory that de-
liberately discards moral education and be-
lieves in the sovereign efficacy of a scientific
initiation? It condemns itself, because it en-
visages only the "normal" children, while,
from the point of view we take, they all —
except a few privileged temperaments and
up to a certain point — are abnormal.
Moreover, crowds of facts support the
teaching of reason. For how otherwise can
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 25
we explain the number of "falls" among chil-
dren, and young people, and well-informed
men, than by stating that to resist the sensual
attraction they need a well-armed will de-
votedly attached to a higher ideal of life and
trained to duty by persevering exercise?
Whatever it be, we Catholics have no right
to hesitate on this point. Our faith makes us
believe that in the matter of concupiscence all
of us, without exception, are abnormal, and
this by heredity, in virtue of the original sin
of our first parents that has been transmitted
to us and has been re-echoed even in nature
itself.
Not only do we not enjoy the privileged
state of innocence in which they were cre-
ated, but we inherit the instability of moral
forces that was the result of their fall. We
come into the world with this wound, a little
like (keeping due proportion) to those chil-
dren whom neither age nor the vicissitudes of
life have had time to corrupt, but who, vic-
tims of paternal misconduct, carry upon their
foreheads the stigma of vice. By their
26 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
troubled and hesitating look they proclaim a
physiological defect that makes it harder for
them to exercise their liberty.
Try as you will, my readers, you will never
succeed in explaining, apart from the doc-
trine of original sin and its transmission of
heredity, how so many men encounter such
difficulties in leading a truly human life, in
resisting the animal impulses. At least you
will meet mysteries much more troublesome
than those of original sin. For you must ex-
plain how, side by side with those who wal-
low shamelessly in the mire and almost make
us doubt the educative value of the human
ideal, there are thousands who in wisdom and
morality even surpass the human ideal.
You must tell us why so many martyrs,
apostles, and virgins preferred death to any
surrender of conscience. For they were made
of the same clay as the others. The flame of
bad desires encircled their hearts and excited
their flesh. Many even among them ascended
so high only to fall the lower. Now I defy
you to assert and prove that to accomplish
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 27
such results it was sufficient to be scientifically
initiated into the mysteries of sense. This
mere initiation, if it be exclusive, would suf-
fice to explain the fall and misconduct of
the others. For is it not St. Paul who has
said (evidently in a relative sense) that if the
law had not been revealed to the world, man
would not have sinned?
The knowledge of the law, the scientific in-
itiation, by themselves will avail nothing. It
should be added that it is the education of
the will, of which Christianity holds the se-
cret in furnishing the will itself with the most
powerful motives for action and the grace
which permits the assimilation of these divine
motives, in a vital way, by means of charity,
that brings the senses into subjection, sows
the seeds of divine virtues, and makes to en-
ter into the soul even the slightest rustling
of the purifying breath of ideal Beauty.
1 Bulletin de la Societe Franchise de Philosophic,
fevrier, 191 1, pp. 29, 99.
2 M,p. 31.
3 /^p. 30.
28 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
4 /^,p. 31.
5 Id., p. 32.
6 Id., p. 32.
7 To simplify the discussion, we confine ourselves here
to the natural virtues, reserving the privilege to speak
later on of the supernatural virtues and of the laws of
their normal development. It will be clear then why this
division is legitimate.
8 Delvolve, Rationalisme et Tradition, Paris, Alcan,
1910.
9 Foerster, L'iEcole et le Caractere, pp. 61 et seq.
10 Bulle/tin de la Societe Franchise de Philosophic,
fevrier, 191 1, p. 31.
11 Id,
CHAPTER II
MORAL TRAINING TO PURITY AND THE SCIEN-
TIFIC METHOD
SCIENTIFIC initiation, pure and simple
(that, namely, which rejects moral educa-
tion as a useless appendage), though naturally
non-moral, is destined practically to become
immoral. We trust that we have enlarged suf-
ficiently upon this point and shown the neces-
sity of a strong moral education.
There is no reason, indeed, why we should
not indicate to children in general terms the
road to follow in regard to purity, if at the
same time we arm their wills to take it. Now,
experience teaches — and faith on this point
reinforces the teaching of experience — that
the wills of children are not naturally pre-
pared to walk without risk or weakness in a
sphere so dangerous. The fire of concu-
29
30 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
piscence that smoulders in them on their en-
trance into this world, and the species of moral
instability that is its consequence, place them
in a condition of manifest weakness to main-
tain themselves without effort at the height of
a teaching that indicates not only dangers but
also pleasures. And the pleasures are such
that the prospect of dangers accompanying
them is not capable, by itself, of destroying
their power of suggestion.
This is something that educators, careful of
their responsibility, should not lose sight of
when they speak of calling the attention of
children to a particularly animal side of their
nature. Before enlightening children, how-
ever this be done, educators should strive
especially to give them the necessary strength.
Side by side with the rule that illumines the
intellect should come the motive that grips
the will and makes it, by a methodical and
sustained action, submit to the requirements
of the rule and enables it to conquer the senses.
Most educators, both secular and religious,
now admit this. But all do not understand
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 31
it in the same way. The advocates of a sci-
entific initiation are almost all of the opinion
that this initiation necessarily demands a
strong parallel moral education. But they
are far from agreeing upon the educative
value of the motives called in to train the
will and to assure, by a persuasive gymnastic,
its domination over the senses. Hence I wish
in the following pages to prove against secu-
lar educators that to be effective, moral edu-
cation ought to be religious; and, against cer-
tain Catholic educators, that an education,
properly speaking scientific, is not always a
necessary condition for this effectiveness.
7. Moral Education and Chastity; Sexual
Pedagogy
At the outset one may ask how it is possible
that some men, otherwise very intelligent, at-
tribute so little importance to moral educa-
tion in such a delicate field as chastity, yet
believe in the omnipotence of science. One's
astonishment at such a phenomenon dimin-
32 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
ishes when he learns that the decided par-
tisans of a scientific initiation pure and sim-
ple are almost all physicians.
The psychology of physicians (at least of
those who look upon medicine as more of a
science than an art) is generally very simple
under the influence of education. Habitu-
ated by their office to treat of the most deli-
cate matters from a scientific standpoint, they
find, precisely in their exclusively scientific
preoccupations, a personal remedy for the
dangers that may come from these things for
those who have not the same preoccupations.
Thence it is not a far cry to speak of sci-
ence for science's sake, as others speak of art
for art's sake, without weighing sufficiently
the psychological conditions which oblige the
generality of men to envisage things under a
more complex aspect. But who does not see
the danger of such an attitude, especially in
what concerns the training of children to pur-
ity?
Let us grant, for the nonce, that science does
preserve from harm, and that the scientific
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 33
emotion that arises from a clear view of things
renders those who enjoy it in some sort im-
mune, by the very fact of their complexity,
against whatever noxiousness certain revela-
tions may contain. It is none the less true
that a similar "immunity" will be the privi-
lege only of a few specialists, of those pre-
cisely for whom science means everything, and
who enjoy the scientific emotion at the ex-
pense of other emotions, whatever they may
be. But what are we to think of those other
men who are not actuated by science, and
especially of children, who will not be moved
by it?
Now or never is the time to recall a truth
upon which I have already insisted, and which
does not admit of neglect in so serious a mat-
ter, namely, that human nature is not intact.
One may not believe this truth, but he will
be obliged, by scientific loyalty, to bow be-
fore the universal fact that it proclaims. In
fact, if there are some among us who are sen-
sible to the charms of science, and if from
its touch we experience a high and healthy
34 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
emotion, there are more of us — even the most
of us — who, in the face of certain "realities"
that have nothing to do with science, feel,
during dark hours from which no one is ex-
empt, certain evil inclinations that the scien-
tific emotion, by itself, cannot neutralize.
It is a general truth that this painful con-
dition is the more evident among children.
Science, as such, tells them nothing that avails;
and their will, in an embryonic condition, has
no power of protecting them against these
revelations. To maintain with Dr. Doleris,
for example, that to preserve the spirit from
surprise and fear and curiosity it is sufficient
that the child's intellect, in virtue of a wisely
graduated teaching, should be enlightened in
advance of the physiological manifestations of
the sexual instinct — doubtless this is to show
one's self an optimistic theorist, but not a well-
informed psychologist.
Foerster has with power and just astonish-
ment raised his voice against such an intel-
lectualist method. "The contemporary cham-
pions of sexual education are gravely de-
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 35
ceived," he writes, "when they imagine that in
our purely intellectualist schools — where the
moral aspirations of the child are only poorly
and superficially fostered — one can all of a
sudden, without any change of teaching, give
abundant enlightenment upon the most animal
side of our nature and fight these temptations
by making a simple appeal to a sense of honor
that has not been cultivated, and to a force
of will which has never been exercised. It
should not be forgotten that all teaching of
this kind reveals not only dangers but also
pleasures, and that to renounce the pleasures
there is required not merely a well-digested
knowledge, but a sufficiently strong will." *
Now, then, what can give the will the power
it needs efficaciously to resist the instinctive
impulse of the senses towards these pleasures
that can be revealed to them? In the first
place, it is necessary to present to the will
objective motives capable of concentrating all
the powers of love and desire that it holds
in reserve, and which only need to be wisely
utilized. Because, under the influence of these
36 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
motives, whose character of irresistible attrac-
tion is well expressed by the term ideal, the
will undertakes the task, and, by repeated acts
generating habits or moral virtues, gives the
preference to less special goods which aid it
in assimilating more and more of the ideal
loved, and in realizing it; that is, in impreg-
nating all its actions with that light and in
captivating for its own advantage all the use-
ful energies of human sensibility.
But how are these motives capable of turn-
ing aside, for the advantage of the human
ideal and the detriment of the animal senses,
the immense need of happiness at the root of
the will? It is here that the declared ad-
vocates of a strong moral education, as a sup-
plement for a scientific teaching about the
physiology of sensation, do not agree. Though
they unite in asserting the necessity of these
motives, they do not all present them in the
same way, nor attribute to them the same edu-
cative value.
MM. Parode and Malapert, for example
(replying to Dr. Doleris, whose radical and
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 37
exclusive intellectualism they reject), think
that moral education can be given without ap-
peal to any metaphysics or religious dogma;
that, without leaving the domain of nature
and passing the sphere of social activity where
our individual life flourishes, it is possible to
find motives to resist the disorders of sense
and to protect children especially against the
dangers which attach to the precocious and
(according to them) necessary revelations. I
am much afraid that they are mistaken and
are exposing themselves to serious miscalcu-
lations.
The lay school, after twenty years of care-
ful experimenting with the educative value of
well-learned motives of human dignity and
social justice dear to its partisans, has entirely
failed upon this special point — as upon others
— to furnish any proofs. Indeed, it would
even be easy enough to show this by the facts
that it has unearthed.
It is no secret to any one that criminality in
general, and juvenile criminality in particu-
lar, especially in what concerns sexual moral-
38 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
ity, has developed in a distressing fashion in
the past years ; that is to say, since the develop^
ment of the secular schools. But let us drop
the facts now and see the theory. M. Del-
volve has brought out its inefficiency; and even
supposing — what I do not grant — that his ar-
guments are not irrefutable, at least his at-
tempt should have the merit of shaking the
unlimited confidence that the systematic ad-
versaries of religious teaching have placed in
an exclusively lay education, and should make
them more cautious.
Almost all recent students of statistics of
crime have given as one of the causes for the
recrudescence of crimes among children and
adolescents the progressive disappearance of
religious teaching, certain of them bearing this
testimony even while calumniating religious
teaching. 2 Is not this a direct blow at the
omnipotence of secular education?
M. Jacob, for example, in his manual of
secular morality has finally expressed serious
doubts as to the efficiency of his method. We
have the proof in one of the letters of the emi-
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 39
nent professor to his friends, recently pub-
lished by M. Bougie. Here is the most sig-
nificant passage:
"The labor of revising my course of moral
practice does not advance rapidly; in the first
quarter I have been able to revise only seven
lessons, and I know that they still greatly need
being gone over and retouched. The task I
am attempting seems more difficult the fur-
ther on I go. I would treat only of the most
simple truths, accessible to the whole world,
and yet I hate to mutilate the most complex
ideas in simplifying them. Then, too, I must
admit that upon certain points I have arrived
theoretically at no satisfactory solution. I
shall soon have to treat the problem of jus-
tice, and to-day I tried to define the notion of
justice: it was impossible to get a definition
fitting all the cases." 3
Meanwhile it is upon this notion of justice
that MM. Parode and Malapert flatter them-
selves principally to rest the moral education
of children in the matter of chastity. 4
I believe, indeed, that this notion of jus-
4 o INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
tice may efficiently serve as a foundation, but
on condition of giving it its full value meta-
physically and concretely by combining it
with the idea of God. Because, apart from
this divine foundation, the notion of justice
can have only a relative value. Justice, no
more than the society on which it is based, has
within itself its raison d'etre. Therefore it is
not ultimately but mediately in its name that
we can demand of men the practice of con-
tinence, regard being had to the claims of
society upon the individual and the duties of
individuals to society, whose foundations
should not be undermined by immorality.
The case is the same with the notions of hu-
man dignity and autonomy, upon which some
found the most beautiful hopes. Separated
from the idea of God, they lose the greater
part of their value. Foerster, who is particu-
larly attached to the development of the idea
of autonomy as the ultimate motive of moral
education, advises us, at the end of his work,
that in his opinion this autonomy, to be ef-
ficient, ought itself to be based upon a reli-
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 41
gious foundation, and he promises a thesis
upon this point.
I do not deny that motives drawn from so-
cial justice and human dignity may have in
themselves a certain educative value. But
this much is sure, that this value is pedagogi-
cally small. These ideas are too abstract to
influence the souls of children and to render
wholesome their physical tendencies. In this
regard they can do next to nothing.
It may be granted that it is always possi-
ble to embody these ideas in facts or in repre-
sentative men, and in this way to incite imi-
tation, to which children are so inclined. But,
in the first place, it would be necessary for
all the educators to agree upon the value of
these ideas, and upon the men who represent
them. Now one knows well enough from ex-
perience that the present-day secular educa-
tors have not all the Same notion of social jus-
tice or of human dignity. On the contrary,
their ideas on these points are most anarchical,
and usually they are much more concerned
with political than with moral education.
42 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
From the secular point of view, then, we
are reduced to a moral education which rests
entirely upon motives whose theoretical value
is lessened by isolation from their divine
source, and whose pedagogical value is prac-
tically nil, or almost so. I do not conclude
that secular education in itself is to be con-
demned; but I have a right to conclude that
to be really efficient, it ought at least to con-
nect its motives of action with their living
source — God. So long as secular education
does not do this, and especially so long as it
does the contrary and organizes war against
God, it is doomed to impotence. One can pre-
dict that without being a prophet and with-
out sneering.
Besides the fact that religious teaching has
proved its efficiency in training to purity, and
that a long experience argues in its favor, it
is not useless to recall that part of its abso-
lute educative power comes from its motives
and part from the wonderful provision of
grace which is placed at the disposal of those
wishing to live under its influence.
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 43
Theoretically and pedagogically, the mo-
tives for moral education invoked by the
Catholic Church are irresistible. I shall not
insist upon their theoretical value. It is
enough to recall that in asking her adherents
to act for love of God, whose right to com-
mand us is incontestable (since He unites in
Himself all the other motives of action as
being their only objective raison d'etre), and
in proposing eternal happiness with Him
upon condition of our temporarily conform-
ing with His will, the Catholic religion re-
sponds to all our capacities for desire, to the
tendency to universal happiness which char-
acterizes the human will and which cannot be
realized apart from the Infinite.
But to have a real pedagogical value, this
universal divine motive with an absolute theo-
retical value ought to be able to concretize
itself. The universal, as such, is abstract, and
escapes the comprehension of the child.
Hence it is difficult to integrate it to the grow-
ing will, and, by the will, to all the tenden-
cies of sense. Now, who has ever gone as
44 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
far as the Catholic religion in the "realiza-
tion" of its motives of action; in other words,
of its Ideal?
To us, our God, the very same who rules
and vivifies our conduct, is not merely an Idea,
but the Supreme Reality. He is Being Itself,
say the philosophers. "In Him we are and
live and move," proclaims St. Paul. He
dwells personally in the souls of the justified,
declares the Church. More than that, our
God is to us the Incarnate Ideal, the Word
made flesh, the God-man ; in a word, Christ,
in whom are concentrated the Christian teach-
ing and life.
The doctrine of Christ is the centre of the
Catholic dogma. Indeed, it is to Christ that
all doctrinal ideas lead, and it is from Him
that all the means of realizing these ideas,
and of living, are derived. He embodies in
His person the ideas and the facts. The in-
dividual life of the faithful, as the social life
of the Church, revolves around Him.
To believe in the person of Jesus Christ, the
Incarnate Word, is at the same time to be-
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 45
lieve in the Father who sent Him, and in the
Spirit of love who proceeds from the Father
and the Son, and who has been sent to us by
Them.
Belief in Christ is easily instilled in chil-
dren. The name of Jesus is the first that they
murmur at the knees of their mothers. At
the name of Jesus, upon awakening, the idea
of God takes form in their imagination.
Through Him they picture to themselves
their heavenly Father, and Mary, their
heavenly Mother. At the invocation of the
Sacred Name they have an intuition of all that
one can expect of them. Because, if Christ
is the centre of Catholic doctrine, He is also
the model of Christian life.
Every Christian has at his disposal the ex-
amples of His life. By them he is urged to
the imitation of the divine Model, obliged, as
He, to carry each day the cross that God has
fashioned to the measure of his weakness or
strength. There is not a duty of the individ-
ual or social life of which Christ has not given
him an example which strikes him and con-
46 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
stantly appeals to the sense of his duties to-
wards God, his neighbor, and himself.
The child especially, if he be naturally in-
clined to imitation, finds in the Child of Naza-
reth a rival, and it is not hard for those who
have charge of his moral education to select
portions of the life of Jesus Christ with special
reference to purity. This is so much the easier
to them, since, not content with being the
model of the Christian life, Christ is its ever-
flowing spring.
Is He not the Author of grace by which our
nature blossoms in living works? And to com-
municate to us this grace has He not given
us sensible signs called Sacraments? Now it
is by grace, we know, that we enter into direct
and intuitive communication with God, that
we experience His presence. This experience
of the divine is at the gate of all justified souls
and adapts itself to all ages, temperaments,
and conditions.
The child who is in a state of grace, but
whose intellect has not yet put away the swad-
dling-clothes of sense, can, after its own fash-
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 47
ion, experience God, divine what he cannot
understand, feel supernaturally what naturally
escapes his intelligence and his faith. And
this embraces the essentials of the Christian
interior life. As regards worship itself,
whether it be interior or exterior, social or
individual, is it not all completely organized
in virtue of Christ? Is it not possible to give
to a child of the tenderest age the beneficent
obsession of Jesus? The first sign of religion
made by him, under the impulsion of a mother
attentive to the best things capable of morally
influencing the soul of her child — is it not the
sign of the cross? The first formulas that pass
his lips, still incapable of clearly expressing
them — are they not theological formulas, the
"Our Father" and "Hail Mary"? So small
that he is hardly capable of anything, the
child is already praying, in the morning, at
night, after meals. His prayers take — and
nothing is more touching — the form of a so-
cial duty. He prays for his relatives, for
sinners, for the Church.
48 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
Without knowing exactly what he says, the
child divines what he wishes to say. One
gets the impression that he is not alone when
praying, he puts so much naive gravity into
his prayers. For him these acts are not as
others; he feels them, and spreads around him
a vivid sense of the divine.
Of what influence is not a doctrine such as
the Catholic capable, when it has at its dis-
posal such means of life, so suitable to the
time, and so efficient? We are very far from
abstract formulas of human dignity and so-
cial justice.
And we have not said all. For if Christ
is the eternal spring of the Christian life, He
is also its daily food. One will understand
that I speak of the Eucharist, the Sacrament
par excellence of the living, to which all the
others are directed. Thanks to the Eucharist,
it is allowed us, in the degree of our needs and
our desires, to incorporate ourselves with
Christ Himself; or, better still, to assimilate
ourselves to Him, and, with Him, to assimi-
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 49
late all the doctrine and all the life that He
concentrates in His person.
The unbelievers and many of the faithful
were scandalized or simply agitated when the
Holy Father recently extolled Holy Com-
munion for children. GBut there could be
nothing more normal, nor more fatherly, than
this deed. If one grants that Christ is the
"Spirit of life," why cannot children com-
municate with the Spirit and partake of this
life? Does not their weakness rather plead
in favor of this solution? The Christ whom
they receive would help them, in their own
default, to remedy their weakness by an abun-
dance of grace appropriate to their state.
Living in Christ since their childhood, they
will be less tempted, when the time comes,
to seek their life elsewhere. When their
senses awake, the living joy which will come
from an habitual contact with God will guar-
antee them against the seduction of pleasures,
especially of the imagination. Their moral
education upon these points will be more
50 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
easily accomplished, and the special teachings
deemed opportune will find them already pre-
pared to receive them.
I do not wish to pretend that this life of
grace before nature has been able to give any
true signs of life absolutely guarantees chil-
dren against all danger of falling. But it is
clear that there will be marvellously pre-
pared in them the habit of acting according
to grace, which acts — and this without con-
tradiction — only in conformity with the laws
of nature.
A Christian education thus organized, with
such motives for action and such means of
life, enables the young man to strengthen
himself by reflection upon such powerful mo-
tives and by the use of such efficient means.
Dr. Doleris has pretended that the Church
has failed in her mission regarding education
to purity. Doubtless he intended to say that
there are many Catholics at the present mo-
ment who are not chaste. Granted; but is
not this precisely because they are not really
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 51
Catholics, but such only in name? What does
this prove? Absolutely nothing, if it be
shown that Catholics who really live accord-
ing to their faith and use the means of life
it affords never find it too hard to acquire and
preserve the virtue of purity. Thank God,
there are still many such. If Dr. Doleris
has a love for the truth, let him make a se-
rious investigation of our institutions and
colleges and religious houses, and our fami-
lies, and he will be edified upon this point.
Given a Christian education, in the integral
way in which I understand it, from the cradle,
it is impossible for a child, arrived at the
age when revelations become necessary, not
to be^armed effectually to resist the sensual
excitation which may come to him from these
very revelations conjointly with the crisis of
puberty through which he must pass. The
question now is to know what one should rea-
sonably understand by "revelations," and, for
example, if it be necessary that they should
be of the scientific kind.
52 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
II. Moral Education and Scientific
Initiation
Many educators, secular and religious, we
have already remarked, are advocates of a
scientific education of children regarding the
problem of purity. Some urge an individual
scientific education, the duty of imparting
which will be incumbent upon the parents;
others advocate a collective education, and
are willing to confide it to specialists, and
even to physicians. This is, in particular, the
opinion of Dr. Doleris, but he is not the only
one to sustain it. Dr. Toulouse is of the
same view. M. Durkheim agrees that the
scientific initiation proposed by Dr. Doleris is
necessary, but that moral education should be
added. 5 This is also the opinion of M.
Parode. I make an exception of M. Mala-
pert, because of a conference given by him
upon this subject, when he understood collec-
tive education in purity otherwise than the
fanatics of science. 6 In short, a large num-
ber of lay persons and many physicians,
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 53
among whom are the most influential mem-
bers of the Societe Frangaise de Prophylaxie
Sanitaire et Moral, favorably regard the in-
stitution of technical and collective teaching
relative to the "secret chapter."
But it is not only seculars that consider the
question of such teaching. Some religious
educators agree, with the reservation that
the teaching should be strictly individual and
not collective. Such is the view of Abbe
Fonssagrives, who asks that religious teachers
associate with themselves in this work scien-
tific counsellors "who can corroborate, supple-
ment, and complete this teaching." 7 But he
vigorously opposes the proposal of Dr. Bur-
lureaux and Professor Pinard to make the
teaching collective. "We believe," he writes,
"that lectures delivered to young people on
so delicate a subject will go directly against
the moral object that the lecturer would have
in view." 8 Indeed, Abbe Fonssagrives else-
where, speaking of individual scientific teach-
ing, calls it hardly more than a sane notion
of hygiene, and we do not blame him. He
54 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
quotes Bacon, "Propriety is purity of the
body," and recalls that religion and hygiene
have interests in common.
But others are more exacting than Abbe
Fonssagrives. Speaking especially of young
girls, Mme. Adhemar says: "When physi-
ological phenomena announce new functions,
the educator ought to explain them scientifi-
cally, as a fact of the natural order, without
going into useless analysis." 9
These opinions, and others that we refrain
from quoting, have had the effect of arousing
the imagination of certain educators, equally
Christian, such as MM. Barbier and Holland.
One will find the expression is "shaded" to
suit their idea in the Critique du Libe-
ralisme. 10 Perhaps it is just to think that
they might have been able to see the ques-
tion with more calmness, and especially more
objectivity, and that having to fit the conclu-
sions of Abbe Fonssagrives and M. fidouard
Montier to those of the principal collabora-
tors of the masonic review, Acacia, they
should have known that, the principles not
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 55
being the same on both sides, the conclusions
could hardly resemble each other except in ap-
pearance.
In short, when MM. Fonssagrives and
Montier lt propose a scientific education in
purity for young men and young women, it
is on the express condition of associating that
education with an integral religious teaching.
Now I am not aware that the editors of the
Acacia have ever had this idea. It follows
that one cannot without injustice submit the
opinions of the One and the other to the same
anathema. Because this would be to do to
the integral Christian education the injury of
thinking that it places the children who re-
ceive it in the same position of inferiority, in
regard to certain revelations, as those who,
by deliberate purpose, have been deprived of
it, if indeed they have not been forewarned
against it.
Besides, Abbe Fonssagrives, to speak only
of him, forcefully rejects all idea of a col-
lective scientific teaching to be given to chil-
dren on these delicate matters; whereas free-
56 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
masons and freethinkers, without thought of
the modesty of the children, or of the cir-
cumstances of age or sex or environment, in-
sist upon the necessity and universality of such
teaching.
Finally, the religious educators, advocating
a certain scientific initiation of children into
the problem of purity, not only wish it to be
individual, but reduce it to a minimum. Abbe
Fonssagrives restricts it to counsels of hygiene.
M. Montier asks parents to use, together with
clearness and accuracy, all necessary prudence
and reserve. He wishes that parents should
take notice of the conditions under which the
question presents itself to the child, which is
very far from pretending that they are bound
to present it, even before it arises, at random
and out of place.
There is, then, more than a difference of
attitude between secular and religious educa-
tors; there is a complete opposition to sci-
entific education in purity when this educa-
tion would demand on the part of parents and
children a technical knowledge of the func-
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 57
tions which belong to the organs of genera-
tion, or, again, of the physiological conse-
quences resulting from their normal or ab-
normal exercise.
This technical knowledge could only be im-
posed, in my opinion, upon the assumption
that educators would be forced to choose be-
tween this and the method of absolute igno-
rance, which certain theorists still defend by
way of reaction against all scientific initiation.
Up to a certain point I admit that one can
theoretically prefer the method of silence to
that of any sort of intellectual initiation, even
in a small dose, that does not rest upon a strong
moral education. We shall shortly explain
ourselves on this controverted point. But in
practice, considering the way in which the
problem of educating to purity now presents
itself, I would without scruple sacrifice igno-
rance to knowledge, upon the well-understood
condition that the scientific teaching should
always be preceded and accompanied by an
integral Christian education.
Fortunately, we are not reduced to this ex-
58 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
tremity. Between the method of scientific ini-
tiations and rigorous silence there is room for
a progressive intellectual initiation, adapting
itself to an infinity of circumstances of age,
sex, temperament, and environment, and
which compels us to view educating to purity
much less as a question of science than one
of art.
We shall explain shortly the way in which
it seems to us that at present this art of train-
ing to purity, as the basis of intellectual initia-
tion, in the large sense of the word — that is,
varying between common sense inclusively and
scientific initiation exclusively — ought to be
organized. It will be sufficient for the time
being briefly to enumerate the reasons why
I believe an individual or collective scientific
education is neither necessary nor possible.
The first requirement for a good training in
purity is that it should be accessible to all
the natural educators of the child, and to
the children themselves. Now, who would
maintain that all parents are fitted to give, and
all children to receive, a scientific education
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 59
upon so delicate and special a point? Is it
not a notorious fact that a large number of
parents do not know even the simplest and
most elementary and most general laws of in-
fant hygiene? A Dutch statistician, M.
Ramaer, 12 has proved that, in the single coun-
try of Holland, where in the last few years
the Catholic population has dropped from
thirty-nine to thirty-five per cent., the phe-
nomenon is to be attributed to infant mortal-
ity. Now, this mortality is due in a large
measure, it appears, to a complete ignorance of
the laws of hygiene. Under such circum-
stances, how can we require parents to know
and apply scientifically to their children laws
peculiar to the present problem and whose
existence they do not even suspect?
Some one may answer, perhaps, that the
evil is not without remedy, and that for a so-
lution it suffices to initiate the new genera-
tions into the knowledge and scientific appli-
cation of these laws. Nothing is truer, and I
here express my desire for the creation in
the schools of a new branch of education
60 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
where a large part of the time will be given
entirely to elementary hygienic prescriptions.
But to be scientific this teaching should be
addressed only to young men and young
women who are already formed and in a po-
sition to know the bearing of these facts ; that
is, at an age when the great majority of chil-
dren have left school.
Besides, supposing that the problem were
one day solved for the parents, it would still
remain to be solved for the children, and it
is their education in purity that is the precise
point at issue now. Are children, indeed, at
the tender age when generally the crisis of
puberty proposes troubling questions to them,
capable of appreciating the import of a sci-
entific education on these questions? Some,
perhaps, but certainly not the majority. If,
then, it is possible, without going into the mat-
ter with scientific precision and yet without
being constrained to maintain their ignorance,
to enlighten them, I do not see why one should
not be satisfied with this middle position,
where common sense and tact are called upon
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 61
to play a large role, and which has the rare
merit of being within the reach of all parents
and of all children.
Now this is possible if parents are suffi-
ciently (though not scientifically, in the strict
sense of the word) instructed to apply to their
children the essential laws of hygiene, and
also to satisfy their need of knowing certain
things, whenever this need appears, without
entering into technical details that many
would be unable to give and which would
be superfluous to most children. I cannot
give the whole of this method now, but I hope
that a later development will be satisfactory.
• The scientific education in purity so much
vaunted by certain secular educators and by
physicians — timidly proposed by some reli-
gious educators, too, because of the deplorable
consequences that they fear, in this stream of
evil revelations, from a prolonged ignorance
— this scientific education, I say, not being ac-
cessible to the majority of parents or of chil-
dren, cannot be proposed as a necessary and
universal method. Perhaps it can be given
62 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
sometimes by some parents and to some chil-
dren under certain circumstances, but the ex-
ception proves the rule.
So much for individual scientific education
in purity. What are we to think of a collec-
tive education?
Let us remember that Dr. Doleris would in-
struct even the youngest children in the small-
est technical details of the phenomena of gen-
eration, even in advance of the awakening of
sexual instincts, "so that neither fear nor sur-
prise may seize the spirit when those organs
manifest their vitality, and with these mani-
festations awake the senses and imagination."
Poor children! Let us leave them at peace
on this point as long as possible, and not cause
them the pain consequent upon filling their
little heads with indigestible ideas. Let us
stake everything on the methodic and progres-
sive formation of their will. That is the im-
portant thing.
If, instead of spoiling children and yield-
ing to their every whim, we accustom them
from the cradle to restraint, to obedience, pa-
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 63
tience, a mastery of their nerves; if we infuse
into them a sense of duty, and of the sacri-
fices that it implies, utilizing for this all the
resources of the Christian life and teaching,
we shall have more chance of solving the prob-
lem of educating to purity, when it inevitably
presents itself, than if we had crammed them
with the "natural sciences."
Besides, if the question of a collective sci-
entific teaching be proposed, it would be nec-
essary to exclude the "very young" and to re-
strict it to adolescents of fifteen or eighteen
years, whose senses and imagination are awake.
But does the question so present itself?
In the first place, it would be necessary to
reserve this technical teaching for the elite of
the adolescents, who have already been
"equilibrated" by a strong moral education,
and who would see, behind the scientific ap-
pearance enveloping the facts, the moral value
of the ideas conveyed. For the others, those
whose wills have not been trained and who
have no control over their imagination, would
certainly not escape the peril inherent in a
64 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
teaching that undoubtedly implies dangers,
but also reveals pleasures — and what pleas-
ures!
Even reduced to these proportions, is a col-
lective scientific education possible? I be-
lieve not. Those who have had experience
with young people at the time of indecision
and trouble know well enough that the "best"
suffer by being occupied in common with ques-
tions touching the animal side of our nature.
They lose their self-respect, to which they
cling most tenaciously when alone, but which
escapes them as soon as they are brought to-
gether in a crowd.
Human respect is a curious chapter in the
psychology of crowds. From a false sense of
honor, young people especially try to appear
unchaste in the eyes of their companions and to
believe their comrades are so. Explain this
who can, the fact remains that it exists, and
any scientific teaching regarding purity that
does not take this into account is inevitably
doomed to failure.
Does this mean that, in the field of purity,
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 65
all collective teaching should be banished a
priori? Yes, if there is question of a scien-
tific teaching given indifferently to all young
people, and even if restricted to the elite. No,
if one intends a moral teaching, the character
of which precisely envelops and sweetens the
technical crudity. I think that collectively as
well as individually there are ways of speak-
ing clearly of chastity and of the conditions
of its loss or gain, without giving to the teach-
ing the allurement of a course in medicine or
a treatise on gynecology. This I shall ex-
plain in due time.
Nothing remains now, in concluding this
chapter, except to treat of one little question
whose importance will not escape my readers.
That is the question of books, of those which
speak of "all that a young man or a young
woman should know." At the risk of appear-
ing "narrow," I am not afraid to say that
this bookish solution of the problem of edu-
cating to purity is not a solution at all, and
that in practice it defeats the purpose pro-
posed by its advocates.
66 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
Indeed, it is the same with technical books
as with collective scientific teaching, if their
danger is not even greater. For the book,
taking no account of the relative moral value
of its readers, places a dangerous instrument
of education in the hands of the young. Even
the best among them are tempted to read such
books, as they read their dictionaries at school,
for other motives than those of instruction.
And this is not to do an injustice to young
folks, but to defend them against themselves
on this point. It is very easy to remember
that in them, as in others, human nature is
not intact, and that because of their youth
they are apt to forget this. It is the duty
rather of parents and confessors to read these
books, to meditate upon them, to correct them,
to tone down the technical harshness, and to
adapt them to the use of adolescents.
1 Foerster, L'ficole et le Caractere, pp. 61 et seq.
2 Duprat, La Criminalite dans l'Adolescence, p. ioo.
3 Jacob, Lettres d'un Philosophe, par P. Bougie.
4 Bulletin de la Societe Franchise de Philosophic,
fevrier, 191 1,
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 67
5 Durkheim, Bulletin de la Societe Franchise de Phi-
losophic, fevrier, 191 1.
6 Malapert, La Morale Sexuelle a l'Ecole, in the Revue
de F£ducation, mars, 1909.
7 Fonssagrives, L'Education de la Purete, p. 56, 5th ed.
•W./P.59.
9 D'Adhemar, La Nouvelle Education de la Femme
dans les Classes Cultivees.
10 November 15, 1910; September 15, December 15,
19.II*
11 Montier, De l'Education Sociale et Sentimentale des
Filles.
12 Religie in Verband met Politick in Nederland, 1909.
CHAPTER III
THE METHOD OF SILENCE AND THE METHOD OF
COMMON SENSE
AMONG those who are at present occu-
pied with the problem of educating to
purity we have seen that there are warm par-
tisans of a scientific initiation pure and sim-
ple. According to them, it suffices to reveal
to children, without distinction of age or sex,
/ all the technique of the "secret chapter" in
order to enable them to avoid all the dangers.
The scientific light would in this case play a
role ordinarily reserved for the moral force.
Unfortunately this method has no practical
value. By not taking into account the general
s and individual psychological conditions that
characterize children in regard to purity, it
goes directly against the end proposed. It dis-
x arms the will under pretext of enlightening it.
168
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 69
The will, indeed, has more need of strength
than of light, though it has need of both. But
it is not the light that gives it strength. The &«*"
strength of the will, and especially its mas- 4^ *
tery over the senses, comes from sentiments
inspired by irresistible motives of action, and
from a persevering action sustained by these
sentiments.
To pretend, then, in the difficult field of
chastity, to substitute for a preliminary train-
ing of the will a precocious education of the
intellect is to upset the conditions of the prob-
lem and to expose the children to the very
dangers from which we wish to protect them.
The fact is that on this point nothing can re-
place a strong moral education of the will,
and, in particular, an integral religious edu-
cation. This, we submit, we have sufficiently
proved.
But once admit the necessity of this moral
education of the will for all children with-
out exception, and that from the cradle, and
another question not less important claims the
attention of educators, whether these be
70 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
parents or confessors, or those who have re-
placed these for the child.
Here is the question.
Can one so far presume upon the moral
strength of children, gained by an integral re-
ligious education, as to give them, individu-
ally and collectively, a technical instruction
in all the details concerning the exercise of
chastity?
Or, if this scientific education be useless and
dangerous, is it necessary to recur to the
method of silence ; that is to say, to put off in-
definitely, in all cases and no matter what the
circumstances, the hour of necessary revela-
tions?-
We have already called attention to the
danger and uselessness of individual or col-
lective technical teaching. It is enough to
recall here that all the natural educators of
the child are not capable of giving, nor all
the children of receiving, this teaching; and
this alone would be sufficient to condemn it.
But, from the fact that everything about
chastity is not to be told even to well-bred
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 71
children, does it follow that nothing at all
should be told? Between the method of a
precocious and technical initiation and the
method of absolute silence is there room for
no other method?
Some educators think so. According to
them, the true principle in the matter of train-
ing to purity is that of silence and not initia-
tion.
This is not our opinion. On the contrary,
we believe that, on principle (apart from rare
exceptions), a certain systematic individual
initiation — let us call it the method of com-
mon sense — always has greater educative
value than the method of silence, upon the
well-understood condition that we are speak-
ing of children brought up in a Christian
manner, and for whom, some time or other,
the question of initiation may demand an an-
swer; and upon the condition, further, that the
initiation be individually adapted to the pres-
ent needs of such or such a child.
We believe, besides, that practically, in the
actual social conditions, where the greater
72 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
part of the children are involuntarily and al-
most fatally exposed to a vicious initiation,
the method of silence, proposed as a general
method of education, would be extremely dan-
gerous.
I. The Method of Silence for Training to
Purity
Let us repeat, to avoid all misunderstanding,
that the children whose innocence it is pro-
posed to safeguard individually are Christian
children who have had the advantage, in their
family, at church, or at school, of the integral
religious education of which we have spoken.
They have arrived at the age of adolescence ;
that is, at the age (evidently varying greatly
between child and child) when, under the in-
fluence of profound physiological transfor-
mations, certain difficulties regarding the prac-
tice of chastity may present themselves to
their souls.
In this case what should the educators do?
If there were question, indeed, of children
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 73
whose moral education had been nil or incom-
plete, the problem of initiation or non-initia-
tion would not present itself. Before dream-
ing of opening their eyes or of keeping them
closed upon the data of a problem such as
that of purity, which engages their moral ac-
tivity, it would be necessary first, without de-
lay, to place their will in a condition of legiti-
mate defence, by a special education, including
both the culture of sentiments proper to their
age and the practice of the corresponding
duties.
Besides, the problem of training in purity
should be confined to those children who have
been blessed with a strong moral education,
and whose will, already habituated, under the
inspiration of high religious motives and pro-
found sentiments, to resist the whims of the
senses, finds itself able, when the occasion
arises, to make head against the special diffi-
culties that may come from revelations rela-
tive to the peculiar practice of chastity.
In reality, this case should be that of all
children in our Christian families, if their
74 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
parents and superiors well understood their
duties as educators, and neglected nothing,
from the cradle up, effectually to prepare them
for all the eventualities of a life of sense.
In this case, and in this case alone, is it
better, on principle, for as long as possible
and by all means to maintain ignorance where
there are still some "mysteries" of chastity,
even though one sees that the question is on
the point of presenting itself to their awak-
ened imagination! — or is it preferable not to
evade the question, and to reply frankly and
clearly, but without going into useless tech-
nical details, and measuring one's answer ex-
actly to the need of the child?
The whole question is there.
I have already noted that certain educators
are rather inclined, even at this decisive mo-
ment for the future of a child, to tie tighter
the bandage of ignorance, under the specious
pretext of preserving its innocence.
The reason that they give is that "it is not
advisable to expose a child to a certain dan-
ger through a doubtful motive." "Now, on
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 75
the one hand," they say, "it is very hard to de-
termine with certainty when it is necessary
to make these revelations to a child ; whereas,
on the other hand, the most renowned educa-
tors affirm that every anticipated revelation
which is not necessary creates a danger that
would not otherwise exist. ,,
Doubtless, "it is very hard to determine
with certainty when it is necessary to make
these revelations to a child"; but the uncer-
tainty exists only in theory, in the question of
determining at what exact age these revela-
tions ought to be given to all children, with-
out distinction.
In practice, parents who follow their chil-
dren closely and by a well thought out moral
education have succeeded in gaining their con-
fidence, ordinarily have not this uncertainty.
And one can say the same thing of the con-
fessor who has applied himself to know his
young penitent thoroughly, and has trained
him to open to him his daily needs.
The claim that "every anticipated revelation
which is not necessary creates a danger that
76 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
would not otherwise exist," is another matter.
The objection is poorly put.
For we are not exactly concerned with the
making of anticipated and unnecessary reve-
lations to children, but with determining
whether it is or is not necessary, at a certain
moment in the evolution of a child — for ex-
ample, at the crisis of puberty and when its
imagination is in a ferment — to make these
anticipated revelations.
Again I repeat that there is question here
only of well-bred children and of parents or
superiors having the duty of fitting the Chris-
tian education of their will to the continu-
ally increasing demands upon their young in-
tellectual and moral activity. It is only in
regard to these children that one can legiti-
mately ask if all anticipated revelation, meas-
ured exactly by the natural educators of the
child, having a knowledge of his personal
needs and the circumstances of his life, "cre-
ates a danger that would not otherwise ex-
ist."
For the day will at last come, even though
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 77
the child grow up with blindfold eyes in
the most wholesome conditions of interior and
exterior life, when the bandage of ignorance
will inevitably fall from his eyes.
Let us grant that this is as late as possible —
at eighteen, for instance. Well, then, I ask
if, at this moment, the young man whose inno-
cence has been safeguarded by an exceptional
ignorance of the difficulties surrounding the
practice of chastity will be in a better condi-
tion to acquire this virtue than the child who,
informed sooner of such difficulties by its
parents or spiritual masters, will have already
passed four or five years in practising and de-
veloping this virtue?
We should not deceive ourselves with words
in such a question of importance. All the
world agrees that there is innocence and in-
nocence. There is the negative innocence that
is not the virtue of chastity, and a positive
innocence which is confused with it. The
one is preserved in an atmosphere of igno-
rance, the other is born and grows under the
sun of truth.
78 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
We should make a mistake to oppose one
to the other, as if in every state of the case
the first were preferable to the second, or the
second to the first.
There is a time when negative innocence
forces itself on one. This is in the first moral
preparation of the child, when the general
education of his will is far preferable to a
precocious education of his intellect upon a
delicate point which does not yet interest him,
and in regard to which he is not sufficiently
armed. For how many years this period of
moral preparation, this kindergarten of chas-
tity, ought to continue, no one can determine
a priori. This depends upon the competency
of the parents and the precocity of the child.
But we suppose a child who is, morally
speaking, as well prepared as possible, and
whose will, from his tenderest infancy, has
been habituated to resist his growing pas-
sions, to subdue his anger, to conquer his lazi-
ness, to bridle his desire of independence, to
fight against softness, jealousy, vanity, and
other moral disorders which are found in em-
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 79
bryo in all children. It is understood that
in regard to chastity this child has guarded
his innocence, and this is not yet placed in
question.
But now suddenly the crisis of puberty
comes on.
Under the dominion of physiological trans-
formations of which he is not the master, he
undergoes sensible impressions whose nature
he does not understand; a sort of moral lan-
guor invades his whole being; his imagina-
tion, until then taken up with realities and
glutting itself with things, becomes excited in
sleep; at irregular intervals his heart is suf-
focated with anguish and his mind oppressed
with presentiments. He who never had a
care begins to be anxious about everything.
Doubtless he does not yet seek very far un-
der the words he hears, the pictures he sees,
the silence he observes. But still he does seek.
He loses the beautiful carelessness regarding
everything that was as the radiation of his in-
nocence, the limpid clearness of his look, the
naivete of his words and gestures. In short,
J*
80 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
he passes from childhood to adolescence.
Now, in the opinion of all educators, this
transition is not without danger. This is why
one may ask if this is not the time to make
the passage also from negative innocence,
where he has lived, to positive innocence,
where he is called to live; and if the chastity
that he can be made to acquire in knowledge
of the cause, with all the precautions due to
his age and inexperience, will not be of much
greater assistance to him than that which he
has practised until now, without taking ac-
count of the matter?
To reply to this question it is necessary to
say a word about the virtue of chastity among
adolescents and adults. Chastity, declare the
theologians, is a virtue whose object is to bind
the senses to the demands of reason in the
domain of sensible emotions, in order to keep
them from degenerating into sensual emotions,
which, sought for themselves, excite the flesh
at the expense of the spirit.
The exercise of this virtue evidently sup-
poses in him who practises it a certain knowl-
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 81
edge of its object. To govern by the light of
reason, under the impulsion of a right will,
sensible emotions whose development does not
always depend on us, it is necessary for us in
a certain way to have passed through these
emotions. At the least, there is required a
concept in order to concentrate upon it our
ideas, and to acquire, by the repetition of con-
trary acts, the habitual force which permits
the will to master the emotions, and to resist
them upon the slope of special and violent
joys where they would hurry it on.
But it is clear that the knowledge of these
emotions of the flesh, since a word, an image,
or a sensible impression may arouse a continu-
ous stream of emotions in the adolescent, can-
not by itself be a guarantee against them. The
knowledge of 4the object of chastity does not
cause in us the corresponding virtue; it is
only a condition of its acquisition and develop-
ment.
And, further, this condition is only realized
if the will is exercised on a subject regard-
ing which it has been previously prepared to
82 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
resist all the suggestions of sense, even before
suspecting the existence of those pertaining to
chastity.
What, then, gives to chastity the power of
becoming this habitual force of resistance to
the carnal emotions in a young man who is
passing from childhood to adolescence, from
negative to positive innocence? Ordinarily it
is the repetition of corresponding acts of chas-
tity.
It is the same, indeed, with habits of soul
as with habits of body. They are acquired and
strengthened by exercise. By repeating move-
ments and applying his body to exercise, a
soldier acquires the muscular resistance and
nimbleness that make him strong. Similarly,
moral strength is gained by bending his will
and his sensible tendencies, by the repetition
of such acts naturally.
The virtue of chastity is not an exception to
this law.
We have already recalled that the idea,
thought, or sensation inclines to the corre-
sponding act, and that this inclination ex-
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 83
presses itself by a corresponding impulse of
the rational or animal appetite, otherwise
called the will or the senses.
Each one of our ideas is joined to a sensa-
tion. To the sensation corresponds an instinc-
tive impulse, a natural tendency to realize the
act represented by this sensation, so long as
no obstacle intervenes. Cataleptics, hysterical
and nervous persons, whose will momentarily
sleeps, are thus at the mercy of the sensa-
tions one suggests to them, or which pene-
trate to the field of their consciousness. It is
the same with normal persons, and particu-
larly with children, whenever their will is
powerless to dominate their instinctive move-
ments of sense.
Smothered in sensation from childhood, the
struggle for the ideal life can save us from
becoming slaves. Our first contact with things
is a sensible contact. Even our highest ideas
are bound up with sensations. Hence the dif-
ficulty of escaping the automatic fruition of
sensible inclinations and of acts that follow
from them.
84 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
The mere natural tendency to seek moral
good that we find in ourselves at birth, and
which Baptism accentuates, does not enable
the will easily to resist impulses of the senses.
This tendency must be strengthened by acts,
I would say by continual desires, especially
during youth, which is at the same time the
age of strongest sense impressions.
If, then, ideas as well as sensations incline
the will to the acts that they represent, the art
of education will consist in implanting early
in the domain of conscience the ideas that one
wants realized — as, for instance, that of chas-
tity — and in driving away at the same time the
contrary ideas.
And since there are no ideas that are not
bound up with sensations, without a corre-
sponding impulse of the sensible appetite, the
voluntary repetition of these same acts will
indissolubly associate all these elements: the
ideas with sensations, those with sensible ten-
dencies with the will, so that the free will,
by an easily understood counter-attack, helps
itself by the spontaneous impulses of sense that
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 85
it will have limbered and organized, and so
realizes, as if naturally, the end proposed.
For if experience shows that every idea, in
all consciousness, tends to provoke action, it
does not the less show that the act provoked
by the idea, when it is methodically repeated,
in its turn accentuates the idea's power of ex-
citation. It is in this way that manias and
vicious habits of all sorts are engendered.
Why? Because not only does the repetition
of an act suppress the possible resistance of
the faculty acting, but creates in it new ten-
dencies to action, a need, in some sort natural,
of action in such or such a direction.
Suppose, then, that in place of having an
automatic fruition of our tendencies under the
influence of ideas or of sensations, we make
this fruition voluntary — in other words, that
we prepare and determine it in favor of chosen
and specified moral ideas — the facility of
placing the act correlative to these ideas will
be the same, materially speaking, but their
moral value will have changed.
Being free, they will have a human value ;
86 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
being easy, they will create, even by their repe-
tition, in the faculties that produce them, the
moral habits called virtues.
One sees now where this analysis leads, in
the subject under consideration. In a child
whose parents have early prepared him, un-
der the luminous influence of Christian ideas
and of the example of Christ, who has em-
bodied them in a living fashion, to will, think,
speak, and act conformably to these ideas and
to the example of the divine Model, it will
not be very difficult, when the time comes,
to implant the idea of purity.
It will suffice artfully to disengage him
from the sense impressions themselves that
the child experiences in the crisis of puberty,
and by means of well-chosen expressions and
images to proportion the content to the ordi-
narily unexacting mentality of a child.
The value, already proved by him, of the
divine motives that he has for regulating his
thoughts, his words, his sentiments, and his acts
upon the life and example of Jesus Christ, of
the Infant Saviour; his will's power of re-
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 87
sistance acquired upon all the difficult points
where he will have been brought to concen-
trate his efforts; the suppleness of sensibility
that a virile education will have helped to give
him: all this will carry him, as if naturally,
towards the ideas of purity which little by lit-
tle will be suggested to him, and it will help
him to realize them.
As if naturally, I have said, because of the
habitual character that clothes the virtue of
chastity, acquired by the repetition of the acts,
since it is incontestable that the habit, rela-
tively to its object, is in us as a second nature.
But this does not exclude the supernatural
concurrence of grace. On the contrary, if
you reflect that, in a Christian soul acting un-
der the impulse of divine motives of con-
duct, grace penetrates its activity to the mar-
row and supernaturalizes it; if you have not
lost sight of the fact that the natural gym-
nastic proper to education in purity finds its
necessary and efficacious complement in the
daily practice of supernatural exercises, such
as prayer and the Sacraments: then you will
88 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
without difficulty understand what power of.
resistance in the struggle to maintain his in-
nocence a young man will have who has passed
in this Christian way from childhood to ado-
lescence, from negative to positive innocence.
Certainly he will be better armed upon the
dangerous ground of chastity, where he will
fight wisely, than the adolescent of the same
age whose negative innocence, maintained by
ignorance, hardly permits him to suspect the
difficulties of the struggle, and will find him
prepared in a way far from suitable to con-
quer them.
Reared in a Christian way, he will assuredly
be in a better condition than the child reared
at haphazard to resist the allurements of sense
and the vicious suggestions from without, on
the day when, willy-nilly, the scales of igno-
rance will fall from his eyes. But he will
be less prepared than the youths of whom we
shall speak, voluntarily chaste, informed long
since against the surprises of sense, and habitu-
ated to prevent or to repress them.
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 89
This, therefore, is the question from the
point of view of educating in purity.
Between the uncertain and relative peril of
a measured and progressive initiation, at the
hour when the crisis of puberty appears in
some way on the lips of the child, or in its
eyes, or in its attitude towards disturbing ques-
tions, and the quasi-absolute security which
attaches to the virtue of chastity in a young
man normally initiated by his parents or his
confessor, has one the right to hesitate an in-
stant?
Yes, reply the fearless partisans of the
method of silence. Because, in the transition
from negative to positive innocence the peril
of initiation, as uncertain and relative as one
chooses, is put off no longer. The least spark
may produce a sensual explosion in the child.
This would occur, indeed, if — to continue
the figure — the powder of sense were not
guarded.
We have been the first to recall that, because
of original sin and the natural weakness of
the will, the moral organism of a child finds
90 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
itself in unstable equilibrium. We have even
called it "instability," and maintained, against
Dr. Doleris, in the light of faith and of ex-
perience, that in regard to chastity all chil-
dren should be considered as abnormal.
But there is a way of remedying this origi-
nal "anomaly," and of giving stability to the
organism. It suffices for this to find the most
that is possible for the moral education of
the child, and to habituate his will, under the
objective excitation of divine motives and
with the subjective concurrence of grace, by
the incessant repetition of virtuous acts pro-
portioned to his weakness, to dominate his
sensibility, and to place him in face of it as
a vigilant and armed sentinel, capable of pre-
venting every explosion. What Christian
child cannot his parents or teachers or con-
fessor prepare for this condition?
If this previous moral education were im-
possible, it would mean despair of nature and
of grace. Fortunately, experience has proved
its possibility, and that in a very great de-
gree. Therefore, in regard to children thus
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 91
stable and well brought up, can one still, at
the crisis of puberty and the formidable tran-
sition from childhood to adolescence, from
negative to positive innocence, raise the scare-
crow of initiation?
The danger — if danger there be — seems to
us more theoretical than practical.
For, on the one hand, no matter how we
speak or act, there will come a day, whether
it be at thirteen or fifteen or twenty years,
when the child who knows nothing ought to
know; and, on the other hand, the initiation
of which we speak has nothing in common
with a technical initiation, which, by its very
crudity, easily plays the role of explosive.
It is not necessary, indeed, to determine
theoretically the age and the amount of initia-
tion. This is, on the contrary, a question
exclusively practical, and relative to the in-
finite variety of circumstances which char-
acterize the biological and psychological evo-
lution of children.
Let us take some particular child — boy or
girl — in a Christian family, and therefore
92 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
well brought up; let us take him at the age
when he is passing through the crisis of pu-
berty; let us suppose, in virtue of this crisis,
and of signs easily recognizable by an experi-
enced and sympathetic regard, that certain
questionings are presenting themselves to his
spirit and his imagination, and let us ask our-
selves if it is truly a peril to reply, taking
account in each particular case of the men-
tality of the child; or if the peril will not be
greater to wish to delay indefinitely, and to
leave to chance the care of substituting itself
for the guidance of the educators?
Certain educators reply to this, that in a
matter of such importance it is much better
to trust to God than to men, and, in default
of the natural virtue of chastity which is ac-
quired by human acts with a knowledge of
the case, to count upon the corresponding su-
pernatural virtue which God Himself infuses
into the souls of children at Baptism, which
He directly increases in them during the
course of their life unless they fail, and which,
because of its divine transcendence, is advan-
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 93
tageously called upon to replace the natural
virtue.
Let us see what is to be thought of this ex-
planation.
//. Reciprocal Influence of Nature and of
Grace in Educating to Purity
This, then, is what prompts certain educators
to delay as long as possible the danger of any
initiation whatsoever in the matter of chas-
tity. Every moral virtue, they say, such as
temperance, patience, purity, is at the same
time a natural or acquired virtue and an in-
fused or supernatural virtue.
As a natural virtue, it is acquired by the
repetition of its acts. As a supernatural qual-
ity, the same moral virtue has an entirely dif-
ferent source. It is infused into the soul in
Baptism by the Holy Spirit. Anterior to all
exercise, it is not by exercise that it grows,
but by the same principle which gave it birth
— the Holy Ghost.
There is much truth in this analysis of the
94 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
natural and supernatural virtues. But if it
were entirely correct, there would be reason,
in its name, of opposing every method of ini-
tiation in the domain of purity. Because there
would be nothing to do, under this hypothesis,
except to refer directly to God the care of
increasing in children the supernatural vir-
tue of chastity, and of proportioning the power
of resistance to the needs of preserving their
innocence in an atmosphere of dense igno-
rance. All initiation, even painless, would be
useless, and parents would have nothing to do
but cross their arms.
But is this analysis exact?
We believe that not only is it incorrect theo-
retically, but that it is dangerous practically. 1
Evidently these educators confuse the ob-
jective relations that sustain the supernatural
virtues with the corresponding natural vir-
tues and their subjective conditions of realiza-
tion.
It is very true that the supernatural virtues
and the natural virtues have not the same ob-
ject, although they are practised upon the
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 95
same matter. The latter helps us to realize an
ideal of an honorable man; the former, on
the contrary, are designed to "make us gods."
Consequently, one may very truthfully main-
tain that the natural virtues are acquired and
grow by the repetition of appropriate acts,
whereas the supernatural surpass nature at
every point.
But is the direct and divine increase of the
supernatural virtues, like their origin, uncon-
ditional? Can one maintain that God aug-
ments the supernatural virtues in us without
our co-operation, or, in other words, that there
is no way, by exercise, in which they grow?
Doubtless the exercise of the supernatural
virtues is not the cause of their increase, since
it is God who directly augments them. But
does He unconditionally augment them in us,
or on condition that we exercise them?
If this were true, if the doctrine of the
parallelism of the virtues were exact, what
influence could grace have on nature? How
could be effected this vital incorporation of
96 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
Christian truth with our tendencies which is
a necessary condition of its efficiency?
Virtue, whether supernatural or natural, is
merely a determination of our active powers
— intelligence, will, or sensation. It modifies
them, naturally or supernaturally, in the sense
of the object that it proposes; it condenses or
concentrates their activity upon a precise
point, instead of abandoning them to their
original indetermination.
But who does not see that virtue, thus sub-
jectively viewed, is inseparable from the fac-
ulty that it modifies or determines; that if it
matters little, in theory, whether it be given
supernaturally by God at first, or whether it
be acquired naturally by us, it is on the con-
trary incomprehensible, in practice, that vir-
tue be developed apart from the power or
the faculty which is endowed with it?
Besides, this is not to say that God does
not directly increase in us the supernatural
virtues, but only that He does not so increase
them except on condition that we exercise
them, and that, under the impulse of charity,
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 97
we posit without ceasing virtuous acts of the
intellect, the will, and the senses, more and
more intense and meritorious.
In a child who has not yet reached the age
of reason, and on this account does not posit
human acts of the will, the supernatural vir-
tues received in Baptism ordinarily do not
grow. When, however, he reaches the age
of reason, God augments these virtues in him
in proportion to the virtuous acts which he
produces under the doubly illuminating influ-
ence of his reason and of his faith, and under
the warm impulsion of charity. 2
The question, then, is not to know if the
divine power, under the species of the super-
natural virtues, is all-powerful in itself and
for the service of God; it is too evident that
it is. But does it keep this omnipotence for
our service, and, if so, on what conditions?
Under the hypothesis, repugnant to com-
mon sense, that God, in giving us His grace,
has reserved to Himself the care of working
out our salvation, without requiring any co-
operation on our part, nothing is easier than
98 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
to live Christianly. But where, then, would
be the merit?
The fact is that God has decided otherwise.
He has not, it is true, spared us His grace;
but this is always on the express condition that
we use it.
He Himself still acts personally in us, but
by adapting, one may say, His activity to
ours ; by leaving to us, under the efficacious in-
flux of His grace, the merit of initiative and
liberty; by subjecting, consequently, the di-
rect growth of the supernatural virtues to the
law of human action.
It is in this sense that the theologians rea-
sonably maintain that if grace transforms us,
it does not deform us; that if it deifies us, it
does not dehumanize us.
In making us Christians, God always re-
spects our liberty as upright men. The su-
pernatural virtues are from Him; they are
given freely to us for our service, and from-
Him comes or not their increase. It is very
good to count upon God's grace, but it is
better to realize that God counts on us.
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 99
Before being a Christian, and in order to
become one, it is necessary to live as an hon-
orable man. Let us always well understand
this formula. It does not mean that up to
a certain age it is necessary to practise ex-
clusively the natural virtues that make a man
honorable, and then to busy ourselves only
with the exercise of supernatural virtues
proper to Christians. The reader is too intel-
ligent to misunderstand us in this way.
There are not in us two distinct beings sep-
arated by a closed wall, man on one side and
Christian on the other, as would seem to be
indicated by the doctrine of parallelism of
the virtues mentioned above. It is the same
person who at the same time and in all cir-
cumstances, from the age of reason to the
grave, must force himself to realize the hu-
man ideal and the Christian ideal, the one
eminently containing the other.
But what should be noted here is the inti-
mate, vital connection which exists between
the development of the supernatural virtues
ioo INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
and the corresponding human and natural
acts.
Experience shows us that charity, for ex-
ample — and by it all the other Christian vir-
tues — increases or diminishes in proportion to
the intensity or the weakness of the human
acts by which we exercise it. It does not fol-
low that it is these human acts of charity that
directly increase the virtue itself of chanty,
as if merely an acquired human virtue were
concerned; but it does follow that God di-
rectly increases charity in us in proportion to
the merit and the intensity of the human acts
of charity which, thanks to it, we produce.
Further, it follows in a more general way
that the development or diminution of the
Christian virtues, notwithstanding the tran-
scendence of their origin, is intimately bound
up with their exercise ; that is, with the greater
or less intensity of the acts, at the same time
human and divine, which emanate from them.
Finally, it follows that we cannot exercise
these virtues without a knowledge of the case,
or, in other words, without taking exact,
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 101
though not always complete, account of their
object, and of the circumstances of their reali-
zation. For if the supernatural virtues are
infused, their object is not.
Let us suppose now that a Christian who
for thirty years has exercised Christian char-
ity, and, through it, advanced in other vir-
tues, happens one day to sin mortally.
It is of faith that at this moment he will
lose at one stroke charity and all the infused
virtues. Will any one claim that this Chris-
tian, when he recovers grace by means of for-
giveness of his sin, will be, as regards the
exercise of charity, in the same condition that
he was thirty or even ten years before, ex-
posed to the same danger of falling? Evi-
dently not.
For repetition of the supernatural acts of
charity that he has made all through his life,
with increasing intensity, will not only merit,
on God's part, an augmentation of grace, but
will have created at the same time in his will
a quasi-natural need of acting supernatu-
rally.
102 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
The repetition of these superhuman acts
has left behind them, in the faculties acting,
a permanent human disposition that does not
disappear with the infused virtues, but will
serve as a natural foundation when God again
infuses grace into the soul. Strengthened by
this human acquisition, the will, regenerated
by grace, will again naturally and easily em-
ploy its supernatural virtues. God Himself
will continue to increase these virtues, but the
facility of exercising them enables the soul to
make always more intense acts which merit,
on the part of God, their increase.
It is, then, in this sense, and in this sense
only, that one can say that grace acts accord-
ing to nature, and that the acquired or natural
virtues facilitate the play of infused or super-
natural virtues. The more these are exercised,
the more they contribute to the acquisition of
the others and benefit by such acquisition. Be-
cause it is clear that the "human residue" (if
I may be allowed the expression) of the long
exercised supernatural virtues facilitates their
intensive development.
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 103
The most beautiful building, if it have not
a solid foundation, is at the mercy of a gust of
wind. The strongest oak, transplanted to too
shallow soil, perishes. Similarly, the Chris-
tian virtues claim from us, in order to give
them their full value, strong human substruc-
tures. On the one hand, they are wonderful
plants, nourished by a divine sap ; but, on the
other, they remain exotic to us. If, then, we
do not furnish them, in the conservatory of
our soul, a soil rich in natural energy, a con-
sistent humus, the least breath of passion that
passes over them will beat them flat and uproot
them. 3
Because of the fire of concupiscence that
smoulders in all of us, the virtue of chastity,
more than any other virtue, is subject to this
law of growth. Hence, before sowing the
ideal seed, under the form of initiation, in the
soul of a child, its educators are bound to
prepare the soil, to strengthen and to enrich
it. This is the object of the preparatory moral
education of which we have spoken.
But one cannot put off indefinitely the time
. ft> W INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
P of sowing, nor leave this to chance. And
since, on one side, the supernatural virtue of
purity, to have its effect, is conditioned, even
in children, by exercise, and, on the other, this
cannot take place by the repetition of acts ex-
cept by a knowledge of the case, why do not
educators profit — I do not say by the first oc-
casion offering — but by the crisis of puberty
to sow in the souls of children with art and
discretion the seed of truth which will enable
them to concentrate on this delicate point the
combined efforts of nature and grace?
Besides, it is impossible that at this mo-
ment God should not come to the help of the
children and of the educators. In the chil-
dren this sane, progressive, sustained initia-
tion, by a combined action of nature and grace,
will always be less dangerous than any sort
of initiation coming to them from it matters
not, where and under a vicious form, at a time
when they least expect it, and when they will
not find themselves prepared for right de-
fence.
Nevertheless, the partisans of silence do not
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 105
yield. Possessed by the idea that the first ini-
tiation, even reduced to a minimum, is calcu-
lated to imperil the innocence of every child,
whether raised in a Christian way or not, and
persuaded that only with age does this first
initiation (no matter whence it comes) lose
its dangerous character, they will not listen to
a virtue of chastity, natural or supernatural,
which can only be acquired and developed in
the light of knowledge, and they prefer to
take refuge in the instinctive sense of modesty,
whose instinctive character they would sup-
plement by reflection.
III. The Sentiment of Modesty in Educat-
ing to Purity
FoERSTER has noted with nicety that "in our
intellectualist century too many persons have
lost the power of comprehending the powerful
defensive instincts of the unconscious life,
which find their expression in the sentiment of
modesty." 4 And if he intends by this that
one has not the right, under the pretext that
106 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
science cures everything, to attack this senti-
ment by gorging children with technical de-
tails relative to the exercise of chastity, he is
perfectly correct.
Such details, exposed crudely and without
measure to children, and even to some adults,
whom one has not prepared by strengthening
their will through an intensive moral educa-
tion, are of a nature to wound modesty and
make them lose their moral poise.
But let us remark that in the hypothesis we
assume there is no question of a scientific ini-
tiation, and that, besides, the children for
whom there is question of a first initiation
have been raised in a Christian way and have
become capable of self-mastery.
It is clear that, even after the crisis of pu-
berty, and, in every case, before the moral edu-
cation of the child is assured, the educators
ought jealously to respect his sentiment of
modesty. "It is precisely because modesty pre-
serves the sexual field from the full knowl-
edge which reflection throws," again remarks
Foerster, "that it has for the educator and for
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 107
the hygienist such a great value that nothing
will ever replace it."
The sentiment of modesty in a child is like
the instinct of "wolf" in a lamb which has
never before encountered such an animal, yet
flees at its approach. The child divines that
there is for him in the field of life's experi-
ences a "reserved domain," and instinctively
keeps on the outskirts of this domain, where
he flees from a word, an image, or an expres-
sion which, though its exact sense escapes
him, urges him on in spite of himself. This
instinctive feeling of modesty, even those
who write unrestrainedly and pose as the
champions of "full light," hold in respect be-
fore some children.
To cultivate this sentiment among chil-
dren, and as long as the crisis of puberty does
not put any troubling question to their spirit,
is a mark of wisdom. In Scripture there are
some terrible words addressed to those who,
without reason or through malice, expose
themselves "to scandalize one of these little
ones."
108 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
Nevertheless, no one among us can keep a
child from passing from the shadows of in-
stinct to the mature light of reflection. A
day comes when, in virtue of the manifold
influences of one's nature, certain formidable
questions propose themselves to his spirit, if
not in precise terms, at least in vague ones,
and whose indefiniteness even accentuates the
peril.
Is any one sure that at this moment the in-
stinct of modesty is a sufficient weapon in
his hand? Will it not be wiser to ally this
instinct with reflection?
The feeling of modesty, indeed, is not, as
some seem to think, exclusively the expression
of the unconscious life. In other words, the
consciousness of evil, or rather of moral dan-
ger, may ally itself perfectly with this sen-
timent in some delicate and well-reared souls.
It is necessary to have the cult of modesty,
but not the superstition. Does one infalli-
bly lose this sentiment in acquiring an exact,
if not complete, notion of things about which
it is concerned? Does modesty, whose very
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 109
name evokes the idea of whiteness, resemble
the snow of the streets that melts at the first
ray of the sun; or does it not recall rather
the snow of the mountain-tops that the full
sun cannot penetrate?
For my part, I think that a certain teaching
of young men and young women upon ques-
tions that the crisis of puberty brings before
their imagination or into their hearts with an
extreme sharpness is perfectly compatible with
a parallel education of modesty. I believe
that there is a way of drawing the attention
of children and of adolescents to certain physi-
ological and psychological manifestations
proper to their age and their sex, while at
the same time cultivating their instinct of
modesty. And it is not necessary for this to
enter into useless technical details; a common-
sense teaching, utilizing current words, and
exactly adapted to the weak intellectual de-
mands of children in these matters, is perfectly
sufficient.
For example, in the mouth of a truly Chris-
tian mother, careful of the spiritual interests
no INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
of her son or daughter, such teaching is
clothed with modesty without losing anything
of its relative and intended precision. There
will be in the attitude of the mother at this
solemn hour a sentiment of responsibility and
an instinctive appreciation of the needs of her
child that will dictate to her the necessary
words, and an accent of goodness that will em-
phasize the moral import. The child will
remain a long time impressed, and, the re-
membrance of the gravity of his mother being
associated in his mind with the things re-
vealed, his modesty will not suffer at all, but
rather be strengthened.
Let me repeat that everything depends upon
the way. But I cannot bring myself to think
that this manner is not within the reach of
almost all mothers who from the first day
have presided over the physical and moral de-
velopment of their children; who have fol-
lowed closely the unfolding of all their soul-
needs; who, in place of satisfying all the ca-
* prices of their children, have accustomed them
* to conquer themselves ; who, at each new diffi-
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE in
culty, have helped them to victory by appeal-
ing to all the resources of religion, of their
heart, by cultivating their piety, by urging
them to receive the Sacraments — in short, by
organizing this pedagogy of chastity which
prepares them in a close way for the passage
from childhood to adolescence, from negative
to positive innocence.
That, in fact, too many parents do not raise
their children in this way, and are more oc-
cupied in "sissifying" than in "virilizing"
them; that in many of our colleges and in-
stitutions religious education is not yet inte-
gral, and that sentiment plays a bigger part
than intellect and will : this is a remark of pub-
lic notoriety and eminently regrettable. But
this assertion of fact does not touch upon the
question of principle.
Doubtless it is necessary to conclude from
it that parents and superiors are bound in con-
science to change their method of education,
or rather to perfect it, in early habituating
their children to struggle against their ten-
dencies, their caprices, and their ease; to place
ii2 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
their senses under the dominion of their will ;
voluntarily to utilize their passions in place of
abandoning themselves to the force of their
inertia, and to do this with all the resources
of grace and for the love of Christ, centre and
model of all Christian life.
But one has not the right to conclude that
"the true principle in the matter of educating
to purity, if one must give one, is that of
silence and not of initiation"; nor to pretend,
in generalizing this principle, that "ignorance
and piety are the two guardians of virtue."
Not only is this untenable theoretically, but
nothing is more dangerous practically.
Of two things, one must, indeed, be true:
either the child whose education in purity is
at stake has not been raised in a Christian
manner — that is, has not received the prepara-
tory moral education of the will that efficiently
arms it against the real or imaginary danger
of certain anticipated revelations (in this case,
if there is yet time, his will ought to be
strengthened by a pedagogy of chastity be-
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 113
fore enlightening his intellect on the special
subject of this virtue) ; or the child, on the
contrary, has received this preparatory educa-
tion, and then it is necessary to choose be-
tween a measured and progressive initiation
adapted by his educators to his moral and in-
tellectual needs of the moment, or a chance
initiation, which, brutal and unexpected, may
destroy in a moment the results of many years
of effort.
Between these two initiations, has one a
right to hesitate? This right, we have seen,
is hardly maintainable in principle. It is not
maintainable in fact when the social circum-
stances accompanying the evolution of a child
multiply at pleasure around him the sources
of vicious revelations and the chances of an
explosion in his senses. Now, who would dare
to assert that this is not the case to-day for
the greater part of the children in all classes
of society?
Never were the chances for an unforeseen
and vicious initiation, in what concerns the
ii4 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
purity of children, greater than to-day.
Never, consequently, was the necessity of a
voluntary and sane initiation on the part of
their educators imposed with greater weight.
1 Taken altogether, this theory fails in every case to
conform to the doctrine of St. Thomas. For St. Thomas,
it is God who directly increases grace in us, but on two
conditions: on condition of the reception of the Sacra-
ments, and on condition of the exercise of our infused
graces under the movement of charity, in which all our
virtues are combined. A little baptized child who re-
ceives the Eucharist without well understanding what
it is doing receives an increase of grace because of the
efficacy of the Sacraments, which always work of them-
selves when no positive obstacle is placed in their way.
But ordinarily, according to St. Thomas, God propor-
tions the graces to the merit and intensity of our super-
natural acts. Doubtless these acts can contribute to the
increase of charity only as they are meritorious — that is
to say, in so far as they proceed from charity; but to
increase charity it is not sufficient that they be merito-
rious; charity is not augmented by God except in pro/
portion to the intensity of the meritorious acts. The
reason is that virtues, even supernatural ones, are modifi-
cations of our powers, and cannot ordinarily increase
except according to the manner of the powers that they
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 115
use; that is to say, by the repetition of acts proportioned
in intensity. It is, indeed, hard to understand how a less
intense act of charity, were it meritorious, contributes
to the increase of charity. It is contrary to nature; and
if one admits, ordinarily, that grace conforms to nature,
one comprehends all the danger there would be in main-
taining that it is not by exercise that the supernatural
virtues increase.
1 am not ignorant that Suarez, who admits that super-
natural virtues increase through exercise, pretends that
it matters not what act of charity, even though of the
least intensity, provided only it be meritorious, helps
to increase grace. But to dare to maintain that his
thought conforms with that of St. Thomas, it is necessary
to contend that on this point St. Thomas is not clear.
Suarez is alone in such an opinion, or almost so. Here
are the passages in St. Thomas which those interested in 5^,
these questions may profitably consult: II, ii, 2; XXIV, *^
a. 6; I, ii, 2; CXIV, a. 8 ad 3 ; II Sent., dist. XXVII, q.
I, a. V ad 3; I Sent., dist. XVII, q. II, a. 3.
2 Here I except the case where the grace increases by
means of Sacraments received ; but the sacramental graces
themselves are ordinarily for action — that is, they have
for their end to make us posit more intense meritorious
actions, which will contribute to the increase of charity,
thanks to their merit and intensity.
3 We shall have occasion to return to this point more
at length, and to illustrate this doctrine by some ex-
u6 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
amples, when we indicate the practical way in which we
can facilitate the exercise of supernatural virtues by the
help of the corresponding natural virtues. (Cf. Chap-
ter V.)
4 Op. cit., pp. 6 1 et seq.
CHAPTER IV
IGNORANCE OF TO-DAY AND INNOCENCE OF
TO-MORROW
FROM our preceding analyses two con-
clusions have already appeared with a
certain clearness. Let us recall them briefly.
The first regards the employment of the sci-
entific method pure and simple in the matter
of chastity. Used alone, without preparatory
or parallel education of the will, this method
cannot help being dangerous, whether it deal
with individual education in purity, or, a for-
tiori, with collective education.
Further, even under the hypothesis of a
preparatory or parallel moral education, the
scientific method remains inapplicable and,
even were this not so, it would he useless.
It is inapplicable because neither can all
the natural educators use it, nor are the ma-
117
u8 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
jority of children capable of profiting by it.
And it is useless if one will carefully ob-
serve that training in purity is more an art
than a science, being, on the one hand, opposed
to collective teaching, and, on the other, es-
sentially dependent, from an individual point
of view, upon an assemblage of factors where
science has nothing to see and where com-
mon sense and a certain number of moral
qualities suffice.
But, in default of a dangerous, inapplica-
ble, and useless scientific method, does it fol-
low that we must have recourse to the method
of silence, and put off as long as possible, for
all children, without consideration of age,
sex, or environment, the time of initiation?
In theory the method of silence seems pref-
erable to the scientific method. There is at
least this appreciable advantage, that it elimi-
nates all collective initiation. But, from the
individual point of view, it puts the difficulty
off without solving it. Because, willy-nilly, a
day comes when children must be initiated,
whether children have been prepared morally,
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 119
by an appropriate education, voluntarily to
resist the dangers inherent in every initiation,
or whether they have not. If they have not,
their innocence will not profit by a prolonged
ignorance. If they have been prepared, it
is in this moral preparation, and not in their
ignorance, that their innocence will find a sup-
port.
Besides, is it not evident that the very
troubling and delicate question of educating
to purity concerns the will more than the in-
tellect of children, and that having asked if
it be better to tell all or to tell nothing, it
is necessary to prepare them morally for
what, according to the circumstances and their
individual need of knowledge, one'thinks him-
self obliged to reveal to them on this ques-
tion?
Thus put, the problem does not seem in-
soluble. For it is stated, in the first place,
in individual, not collective terms. Besides,
this individual moral preparation which al-
lows children, if the case arise, to guard
against the dangers of a measured and pro-
120 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
gressive initiation is merely a matter of time
and degree. Begun at the cradle with all the
resources of nature and of grace, by consci-
entious and watchful parents and superiors, it
enables the children themselves, during the
crisis of puberty and afterwards, to hold their
own against the dangers which may come from
a relatively forced initiation. By relative I
mean relative to each child, to his need of
knowing the difficulties of his temperament,
and the different circumstances in which he
is placed.
Doubtless it remains true that all initiation
in these matters implies some risk. But it is
necessary to know if a prejudiced silence, un-
der all circumstances, does not mean more dan-
ger than a sane initiation, adapted to each
particular case, under the condition of previ-
ous morality that we have assumed.
For our part, we believe that, on princi-
ple, the will of the child being since its birth
prepared by an intense moral and religious
training, this relative and determined initia-
tion will always be preferable to an absolute
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 121
silence, which does not guarantee against all
chance of vicious initiation.
In practice, in the actual circumstances of
life, we think that no serious educator, taking
account of his responsibility, will hesitate a
moment between the hypothetical danger of a
sane initiation, made by those who love the
children and have care of them, and the quasi-
certainty of a vicious initiation, made by any
chance acquaintance without regard for the
souls of the children.
7. Social Facts and Innocence
MANY psychologists have asked why, in recent
times, certain educators, justly busied with the
question of educating to purity, have so loudly
praised the method of silence.
There are many reasons, of which the most
weighty and important, it seems to me, are
drawn from the manifest exaggerations of the
scientific method. But still among these lat-
ter it is necessary to distinguish between secu-
lar and religious educators. The former have
122 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
an absolute faith in the efficiency of the sci-
entific method ; the latter have only a relative
faith.
Secular educators believe that a scientific
training may advantageously supplant a moral
education, and that there is no danger in giv-
ing it a collective character, even for the
youngest and without distinction of sex. In
proof of this they appeal to a purely academic
experience.
Religious educators, better informed and
more experienced, are supported by the whole
tradition of the Church in emphasizing the
education of the will as contrasted with that
of the intellect. Nevertheless, they believe
that in what concerns chastity a scientific edu-
cation ought to supplement a moral training,
and not the least among them are not opposed
to collective teaching. And this in part ex-
plains the violent reaction working among the
advocates of silence.
These latter, one must admit, have seen only
too well the dangers of a collective scientific
initiation even among children raised in a
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 123
Christian way. They are convinced, with rea-
son, that the psychology of groups does not
obey the same laws as the individual psychol-
ogy, and that it will always be dangerous to
handle certain "explosives" in public. For
experience has amply proved that serious chil-
dren and young people do not exercise an in-
fluence in direct proportion to their numbers,
if indeed it does not diminish in the same ra-
tio. The fear of appearing what they are will
keep most (excepting the best) young folks
from showing themselves to be what they
should; and educators must always take ac-
count of this strange but undeniable attitude.
Besides, it has not been demonstrated that
an individual scientific education should be a
necessary complement of a vigorous moral
education, partly because of its technical as-
pect and its inability to influence the will of
the children at the same time that it opens the
gate of knowledge, and partly because of the
notorious incapacity of the majority of educa-
tors to give this technical teaching, and of the
majority of children to receive it intelligently.
124 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
But it is not necessary, in rejecting the sci-
entific method, to go to extremes and to op-
pose it with a method of silence. Between
science and ignorance there is plenty of room,
we have seen, for an intermediary individual
initiation which is more an art than a science.
To each particular educator, according to
the circumstances, belongs the delicate task
of knowing what ought or ought not to be said
to any child confided to him, when it should
be said, and how. Nature and grace offer an
infinity of resources in the intellectual and
moral order, and he is strictly bound to use
them wisely. We shall shortly try roughly to
trace the programme of such an education,
where common sense and experience are called
upon to play the principal roles.
It is in the use of this method of individual
initiation, adapted to the circumstances of age,
sex, temperament, and environment, that it is
necessary to look for the tradition of the
Church, and not in the employment of a
method of crude enlightenment or of absolute
ignorance,
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 125
"The Church in the first ages of the Chris-
tian era," writes one of the most ardent ad-
vocates of the method of silence, "spoke to the
faithful a language that would not be tolerated
to-day. But what does this prove? That the
preachers adapted themselves to the under-
standing of their hearers. At that time they
were still in the midst of paganism; certain
gross and repugnant terms were in current use ;
they shocked no one; there is nothing surpris-
ing in the Fathers and Doctors employing this
terminology. But can any one tell us that the
bishops would to-day permit such language in
the pulpit, or in catechetical instruction, or in
classes presided over by a priest or religious?
. . . How, then, can educators in purity claim
the Church as favorable to their system of tell-
ing everything? In the seminaries there is for
priests a course which gives the necessary
teaching on this subject. But the conduct of
the Church regarding this course, far from
proving that she favors the system of telling
everything, shows clearly that she holds it in
aversion."
i 2 6 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
In my turn, I ask, What does this prove?
Evidently this proves against the secular ad-
vocates of the scientific method pure and sim-
ple, that they greatly deceive themselves in
putting all their hope in science as a safe-
guard for the purity of children, as if the
Church's twenty centuries of experience did
not demonstrate to the most obstinate that sci-
ence is powerless and fatal where the will has
not been armed morally against the crudity of
its revelations.
This proves, too, against the religious par-
tisans of a collective or individual education
in purity by means of the scientific method,
that this method, far from being the neces-
sary complement of a strong religious and
moral education, is rather a dangerous instru-
ment in collective, and at least useless in in-
dividual, education.
But it proves absolutely nothing against the
use of a method of initiation in which com-
mon sense replaces science, and which, meas-
ured and progressive, takes special account of
the needs of each particular child, without any
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 127
intention of telling everything, but with the
sole care of saying what is necessary and in
the proper way, giving to the training of the
will the right of way over education of the
intellect, so as exactly to proportion the neces-
sary revelations to the moral power of re-
sistance in the individual.
For there is no question here of telling
everything, as the partisans of silence imagine;
nor of telling it from the pulpit, or in the
catechism class, or at school. The method of
relative initiation that we advocate is strictly
individual, and its employment varies from
one case to another in the intimate family cir-
cle and in the confessional.
Will any one say that this method does not
accord with the traditions of the Church?
Every one must grant that in the first cen-
turies of Christianity the Fathers and Doctors
were not watched so closely in these matters.
In the Middle Ages preachers were not
blamed for calling things in the pulpit by their
names. Later on, certain saints, as St. Ber-
nardine of Siena and St Vincent Ferrer, did
128 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
not beat about the bush in denouncing to their
hearers the grossness of their lives.
The Church to-day, some one says, would
not tolerate such language, and this is true ; but
such freedom is not in question. Besides, no
matter what any one says, this at least proves
that the Church, throughout the long course of
her existence, has adapted her teaching to the
necessities of the moment.
But if the language of educators has been
ennobled, will any one dare to maintain that
the morals of to-day have been improved?
Are we not, on the contrary, witnessing a
veritable recrudescence of paganism? And
if, at the different periods of demoralization
among Christians, the Church has adapted her
language to the needs of the faithful, will she
not to-day, in the family or in the confessional,
for the sole purpose of enabling children of
themselves to react against the licentious
morals they are every moment forced to wit-
ness, allow educators to say to each one of
these children, alone and according to their
personal needs, in a language noble but pre-
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 129
cise, what she once allowed to be cried aloud
from the pulpit, in a crude, gross style, to
crowds of the faithful?
For it cannot be denied that from day to
day children of all classes of society and of
every age are now exposed to seeing or hear-
ing things which endanger their purity. In
this regard poor and rich alike are in the same
boat.
For the poor there is the school, whether
mixed or not, where the companionship of
bad children is always to be feared; after
school, the precocious life of domestic ser-
vice in the town or village or city; then the
workshop ; then the tavern.
For the rich there are almost the same dan-
gers at the college or boarding-school ; or, at
the university, in the conversation, the jour-
nals, the reviews; then, in the world, the en-
tertainments where young men and women are
left to themselves without the surveillance of
parents; dances, galleries, summer and win-
ter resorts, in the mountains, at the sea-shore;
theatres, concerts, and shows of all sorts.
130 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
For all there is the street, with its indecent
posters, its salacious exhibitions, its porno-
graphic post-cards, its suggestive advertise-
ments, and its display of so-called artistic
nudities.
I grant that some children and youths, es-
pecially if they be well brought up and
guarded, may sometimes pass through this
poisoned atmosphere, preserving their inno-
cence in virtue of their ignorance. But they
will always be the exception. Whereas, here
more than elsewhere it is not the exception,
but the rule that counts. And who would
dare to maintain as a general rule that from
twelve to eighteen years one can, without se-
rious and proximate danger of intoxication,
breathe a fetid air, where the poison of im-
purity enters one, so to say, through every
pore?
Moreover, the strictest partisans of the
method of silence in theory are obliged in
practice to relax some of their rigor and make
some concessions. They grant that, being
given the deplorable circumstances in which
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 131
we live regarding social morals, it is allowed
to the natural educators of the child, if they
believe it is not prudent further to prolong
his ignorance on questions relating to chastity,
to give him some knowledge, but not a defi-
nite knowledge. They wish this knowledge
to be "indefinite," and they pretend to make
this concession only on such a condition.
Let us see what we should think of this at-
titude.
II. Indefinite Knowledge and Innocence
Speaking of the dangers of the scientific
method in these delicate matters, one of the
most ardent and most intelligent defenders of
the method of silence has made this remark:
"In the first place, the child wishes to know.
And in this field his natural curiosity will be
sharpened by an instinct whose tendency he
does not understand. It is intended that the
initiation should be slow and progressive.
But you are not able to initiate as you plan.
It is he who manages his investigation. Where
132 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
will you stop your question, and on what pre-
text?"
If there is question of an exclusively scien-
tific education in purity, where science re-
places all moral education, this remark is
profoundly true. For, in the name even of
the science that one imposes on him, he has
the right to know all ; and I do not know what
pretext one can draw from science itself to
place any bounds to his natural curiosity.
But in a system of training to purity, where
the education addresses itself more to the will
of the child than to his intellect, it seems to
me that the educator has a hundred motives
of the natural and supernatural order to for-
bid the child to see further than the scientific
explanations given to him, and that the edu-
cator reserves to himself to give when and
how he pleases. There are innumerable
things that well brought up children would
do if they merely followed their instincts, and
which they give up voluntarily out of obedi-
ence and in the name of God. Will the
natural need of knowing slip the bridle of
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 133
their will in this regard, when they know
clearly that God, the Church, their parents
and superiors wish them momentarily to hold
a tight rein?
And if this be true of a scientific initiation
based on moral education, which we have seen
is inapplicable and useless, much more ought
this to be true about a common-sense, meas-
ured and progressive, strictly individual ini-
tiation, when, by reason of the moral and re-
ligious authority that they exercise over their
will, the natural educators of the child have
the power of satisfying and restraining his
natural curiosity, according to the needs of
the moment, of which they remain the judges.
Moreover, the adversaries of all initiation
admit that, despite the need of knowing which
is natural to a child, one can impose upon him,
during long years, an absolute ignorance.
Will it, then, be more difficult to impose upon
him, appealing firmly to divine motives, and
giving him a multitude of natural and super-
natural means, a relative ignorance, otherwise
H34 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
called a slow, progressive, common-sense ini-
tiation?
Let us recall, also, that the children to be
initiated have been prepared long since, by
an intensive and profoundly Christian cul-
ture of their will, to react against the sup-
posed danger of a sane initiation adapted to
the temperament and to the mentality of each.
Besides, let us recall that this strictly in-
dividual initiation should not ordinarily be-
gin before the crisis of puberty, and that dur-
ing this crisis it is particularly the child's
personal need of knowing that will furnish to
the parents the measure and tone of the ini-
tiation in question.
Finally, let us note that we live at a time
of such general moral deterioration that the
symptoms, by their quality and number, have
delivered us up to a contempt of all modesty,
and have placed that of children in special
danger at the time precisely when, under the
influence of profound physiological transfor-
mations, their little being is in a ferment and
fever of knowing.
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 135
This being so, where is the mother, con-
scious of her responsibility, of so little intel-
ligence and ability that she cannot perceive
in the looks, the attitude, on the lips of her
child, these delicate and disturbing questions,
and cannot find in her heart and soul the re-
ply to give them, and the desired authority to
forbid to the child to seek beyond her an-
swer?
Where is the mother who, having seen,
during a dozen or more years, her son or
daughter habituated to obey her, to act ac-
cording to conscience, to master their growing
senses, to place the will of God in the first
rank as rule of all their conduct, to pray and
to receive the Sacraments with this intention,
will not feel the necessary authority to tell
them, at the critical moment of a needed
revelation, looking deep down into their eyes:
"My child, do not worry. This is the point.
I am not telling you everything, because you
are not of an age to understand, but what you
can understand I do tell you. You must not
inquire further. Some day you will know the
136 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
whole truth ; but the little that you do know,
since it is all true, ought to be enough. Look
upon the desire to know more as a temptation.
Later we shall take up this talk again. But
now pray to God, obey your mother, keep
to yourself what I have told you, and think
no more about it."
Such language from a mother whose good-
ness has gained the confidence of the child,
and whose authority has his respect, will cer-
tainly be satisfactory. But let every one note
that it will be so because of its very clearness,
and not because of its confusion. For the
child tries less to know everything than to
understand the little that one has told him,
and that he requires one should tell him. Or-
dinarily he does not go beyond the questions
that he asks, but this is on condition that one
has not the air of evading him, of answering
beside the mark, or in an unintelligible fash-
ion.
If, then, by "confused" knowledge certain
educators, in the present question, mean an
incomplete knowledge, nothing is better.
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 137
But the term is incorrect, for an incomplete
knowledge is not necessarily confused. We
do not know the whole of anything, but what
we do know is not therefore confused.
On the contrary, if by confused knowledge
these educators mean an ambiguous, vague,
uncertain knowledge, I believe that the rem-
edy that they propose is more dangerous than
ignorance. At least, as long as a child doubts
nothing, he does not seek to know. But as
soon as his soul awakes, if he perceives, from
the intended vagueness of your language, that
you are not answering his questions, or if he
only suspects that you are deceiving him by
answering beside the mark, he will himself
seek elsewhere, in secret, the answer, and he
will withdraw the confidence he had in you.
We are, then, brought to this dilemma:
whether indefinitely to prolong the ignorance
of children after the crisis of puberty (but
we have seen that this is morally impossible,
especially at present) or to profit by this crisis
to give with authority and clearness a com-
138 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
mon-sense initiation proportioned to their
limited and progressive needs of knowing.
I shall not, in closing, invoke my personal
experience of youths, although it is entirely
in favor of this last position. But I could
invoke the witness of many Christian mothers,
who have never had to repent of having so
acted.
By contrast one sees every day, on the mor-
row of their marriage, for example, "well
brought up" young women, whose innocence
has been jealously guarded in favor of igno-
rance, fall victims to the first initiation, and
in an instant and forever lose their innocence.
How many others are bound in marriage
knowing nothing, and who, of their own will,
had they known, would never have wished to
marry, and would have made to God, in re-
ligion or in the world, an offering of their
virginity!
It seems to me that these simple considera-
tions are of a nature to make the reader re-
flect, and that they stand in no need of com-
ment. I do not insist further.
CHAPTER V
A TENTATIVE PROGRAMME OF EDUCATING TO
PURITY ACCORDING TO THE COMMON-
SENSE METHOD
NEITHER crude illumination nor ab-
solute ignorance — that is our motto ; we
believe that we have justified it sufficiently.
Not crude illumination; that is, not scien-
tific education, either individual or collective.
By itself, science not only does not beget
morality, but will, by revealing their object,
awaken in those abstracting from the control
of an educated will the instincts of a dormant
sensuality.
Supported by a strong moral and religious
education, science, under the technical aspect
that characterizes scientific teaching, will re-
main eminently dangerous as a method of col-
lective education because of the peculiar
139
140 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
psychology characterizing all groups of young
people; besides, I do not believe it is applica-
ble by the majority of parents, or useful to
the majority of children, even if considered
as an instrument of individual education.
But neither should we have absolute igno-
rance. Neither in theory nor in practice is
the method of silence a method of education
successfully to tide over the crisis of puberty,
where the natural need of knowing may
awaken from one moment to another.
Between the scientific method and the
method of silence, however, there is a place
for a method of strictly individual initiation,
which supposes as a necessary condition a
maximum of moral and religious education
of the will, and which is more an art than a
science.
In theory this method of initiation, in which
only the needs of the particular child govern
the conduct and usage of the educators, is
far preferable to the method of silence. In
the first place, the moral foundation which it
demands as a preliminary guarantees the sen-
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 141
sibility of the child against the supposed dan-
ger of a sane initiation; besides, it allows the
child, by the progressive repetition of acts
of chastity performed with a knowledge of
the case, to acquire the habit of chastity un-
der the influence and the guarantee of the
corresponding infused virtue, and makes him
naturally chaste, since habit is, beyond doubt,
a second nature.
In practice it protects the child against the
certain dangers of a vicious initiation, whose
sources, in this period of social demoraliza-
tion, have been multiplied at will.
It now remains for us to outline the pro- .
gramme of educating to purity which the
natural educators of the child ought to fol-
low. This programme has two aspects, one
negative and the other positive.
Negatively, the educators ought to use all *j
the forces they can to lessen, if not to suppress
entirely, the innumerable sources of moral
corruption that are the disgrace of our age.
Positively, they should adapt the initiation &/
to the multiple needs of the children under
142 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
their care, taking strict account of their age,
sex, individual temperament, and the dif-
ferent surroundings where they have attained
to virility or full moral maturity.
/. Negative Education in Purity and the
Social Sources of Corruption
I DO not intend to study in detail each of the
active sources of demoralization which seem
to have sprung spontaneously from the depths
of modern society, nor even to enumerate
them all. Itwill suffice to indicate the prin-
N cipal ones in order to throw into relief the
remedy which all of good will, who wish to
dam as soon as possible these currents of im-
morality, should use.
And first as to pornography.
The whole world knows with what inso-
lence and facility pornography is propagated
to-day by the street, pictures, newspapers,
novels, cabarets, moving pictures, theatres. M
Berenger, speaking before the last annual re-
union of the Societe d'ficonomie Sociale, 1
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 143
thus sums up the dangers of the street:
"There is the kiosk, where the obscenity of
the day is exposed; the shops, and even the
big stores, where are found books with de-
grading covers and suggestive titles to catch
the eye. There is the second-hand bookseller,
whose shop is open to every one, and who,
side by side with old books which are all he
has a right to sell, places modern produc-
tions whose illustrations or titles proclaim
their frank obscenity; there is the popular
song shouted in the street with orchestral ac-
companiment, and the refrain repeated in
chorus by the crowd. . . . There is the bill-
board, for which, it must be admitted, there
is something to be said, but which from time
to time offers open provocation to the pas-
sionate glances of the youthful. There is the
distribution of advertisements or shameful
pictures; there is the spectacle of the circus,
where the passer-by, without entering the
booth, gathers something of the audacious
clap-trap attracting the crowd. There is the
poster of the show that no one has dared to
i 4 4 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
present elsewhere, or, again, what is perhaps
worse and more dangerous, saying, 'Children
prohibited.'
"And finally, beyond all, as the most deadly
teaching of the street, there is prostitution
to-day left mistress of the sidewalk, almost
everywhere, almost at all hours, enjoying in
certain quarters and at certain times the fullest
liberty.
"This is the sight that the street presents
to-day. How do you expect children (I
mean that great number who live on the
street, and only there, from morning till
night) to pass unharmed through so many ele-
ments soliciting their curiosity, at an age
when they do not yet know, and when they
(especially those who are forbidden) wish
to know all?"
Doubtless, as M. Berenger himself remarks,
thanks to the watchfulness of those who ac-
company them, many children of the middle
and upper classes escape, at least in part, the
contamination of the streets. But the children
of the people, those whose working parents
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 145
cannot keep watch, and who pass their days
in the street, or merely a part of their day in
going to or from school — how can they es-
cape? They roam around, seeking everything
that attracts their attention or strikes their
fancy; and then from the kiosk, where is ex-
posed the foul picture of an illustrated paper,
they pass on to the book-shop, to the second-
hand dealer, to the window of the artificial
limb-maker, the hair-dresser, the woman's
tailor; then to the circus and all that follows.
This is the evil. But what is the remedy?
The best thing would evidently be to col-
lect these children of the people, during their
hours of complete liberty, in the day-nurser-
ies, circles, and homes, and to undertake their
moral education. We shall return to this
point. But, in the meantime, there is an-
other remedy that presents itself, and that is
v to improve the street." What the police can
do to safeguard material property in the
streets of Paris by prohibiting under fine the
throwing of hand-bills, advertisements, and
<*
146 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
other similar papers, will not the State at-
tempt in order to protect moral property?
The State long ago attempted this by laws
concerning these matters: the law of 1881 on
the liberty of the press; the law of 1881
against publications exposed or distributed on
public conveyances and at the doors of the-
atres ; the law of the 7th of June, 1908, wherein
everything we have just described is expressly
forbidden and penalized.
For the most part the laws would be suffi-
cient if they were enforced — but they are not
enforced. M. Berenger, in the conference
that I have just indicated, has furnished upon
this point of the non-enforcement of the laws
in Paris and in the provinces the most authori-
tative and distressing evidence. He has been
able to prove "that in the measure that the
signs of depravity and the number of offences
increase, the repression diminishes."
This inertia of the authorities is found in
every part of the administration. If you wit-
ness some disgraceful thing in the street and
call a policeman, he excuses himself under the
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 147
pretext "that he has no orders." Once some
circular letters recommended vigilance to the
magistrates; but for ten years no further in-
struction has been sent out. There is the same
inaction at the prefecture of police. No meas-
ure has been taken regarding this abuse in
theatres. It is known that scandals abound,
and yet nothing is done.
In view of this cowardice on the part of
the public authorities, what can be done? M.
Berenger has suggested certain remedies. The
first is to exact a serious application of our
laws. All should concentrate their efforts
on this point.
Afterwards he would work to obtain for
the societies entrusted with the high mission
of securing a strict enforcement of the law
the right to carry cases directly to the
tribunals.
But, while seeing that the laws are better
applied and that the right of direct interven-
tion be given certain societies, there are other
ways of reacting upon the public and upon
individuals.
*)
6A
148 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
Collective action is the great weapon of our
time ; let us use it. Many societies already ex-
ist. It only remains to form some new ones
and to have them all meet, speak, act, and so
create a public opinion that can no longer be
resisted by the authorities. An international
convention has already undertaken the study
of defence against the rising tide of debauch-
ery: so far six nations have joined it. In the
latest diocesan congress of Paris M. de Lau-
nay declared that the Ligue contre la Licence
des Rues et contre la Pornographie (10 rue
Pasquier) helps all who are willing to work
against this evil, and he invited the parochial
committees to enter the field.
In addition he urges that every one join
P^ the fight. The means of enforcing decency
are not wanting. An individual remonstrance
to the seller of the obscenity, a threat of buy-
ing nothing more from him, a personal com-
plaint to the magistrate, is often given greater
attention than the official denunciation of a
group. One can do much by these simple
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 149
means to purify the street; let each one use
them according to his power.
As to demoralizing literature, every one
knows the circulation it has in our times and
the injurious influence that it exercises on
youth. If juvenile crime has increased in
alarming proportions, it is not rash to assert
that this literature is largely responsible.
Among the effects of two children who mur-
dered a whole family were found immoral
writings and obscene songs. The motive for
the greater part of the robberies committed
by children is the desire, provoked and super-
excited by unhealthy reading, to initiate them-
selves into the worst pleasures of men.
Some deadly theories, such as that of "art
for art's sake," the inalienable rights of love,
irresponsibility in crimes, noisily exploited be-
fore the public and circulated by all sorts
of literary and oratorical means, have falsi-
fied the judgment of this generation.
"From this doctrine of success," writes M.
Charles Brun, "that one can correctly call 'the
immorality of literature,' we pass directly to
150 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
the development of individualism, which is
not simply a literary evil. . . . Contemporary
literature, because it justifies passion, because
it glorifies success, tends to I know not what
wild apotheosis of the individual. It pro-
claims the right of each one to remake and to
live his own life, the right to happiness. And
this mirage has deceived our youth, greedy for
pleasure, and who do not know by what con-
cessions and what wise restraint is attained
human beatitude.
"It has struck the hardest blows at the fam-
ily: it has advertised divorce, excused seduc-
tion, attended on free love, lighted incense in
honor of the illegitimate child. It has placed
the father and mother in humiliating positions
in the presence of their children." 2
Assuredly a reaction against this demoraliz-
ing literature has already set in among honor-
able authors, Christian and non-Christian.
MM. Bourget, Barres, Bazin, Bordeaux, to
mention only the chief, have set themselves
resolutely to the task of reform, and exercise
over young people an influence that daily in-
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 151
creases. But the public ought to help them in
their work of restoring literature and morals.
Why can we not have in France what has
been successfully tried in Germany against
immoral literature? In that country the law,
by certain dispositions of the penal code (Art.
184 ff.) and of the commercial law (Gewer-
beordnung, Art. 42a and 56), is enforced; the
government, the administration, the munici-
palities, and finally private initiative, act in-
dependently, and very often unite to attack
and reduce the evil.
Here, for example, is the well thought out
doctrinal programme by which our neighbors
on the east have applied themselves to metho-
dize their efforts. It comprises two parts:
one positive, of which we shall speak again,
and one negative. The following are recom-
mended as negative means of bridling de-
moralizing literature:
"(a) The measures that the governmental,
municipal, educational, and police authorities
can take (to impose legal proscriptions and
apply more strictly existing proscriptions).
152 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
"(b) Prohibition of the sale of certain pub-
lications on the highways.
"(c) Pressure exercised upon the publish-
ers and the small dealers, with co-operation of
the Commissioners of Publication.
"(d) Surveillance of show-windows and
shops.
"(e) Listing the firms selling immoral lit-
erature.
"(/) Putting parents and children on their
guard, through the schools and associations,
against demoralizing literature."
We may add the boycotting of books and of
theatres where such literature is shamelessly
exposed. An attempt of this kind has been
recently made in an American city and has
been perfectly successful. Some mothers
threatened to avoid a theatre for a whole sea-
son if a certain doubtful piece were not with-
drawn; the director was compelled to defer
to the wishes and threats of the public.
But even in the best families a reaction is
in order, for the sake of the children, against
the introduction and display of works univer-
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 153
sally unhealthy. Thanks to an unpardonable
unconsciousness, which can only be partly ex-
plained by the influence of the surrounding
atmosphere, even some Catholic educators are
deserving of grave reproach. I know many
whose libraries, always open and ready to
the hand of children, contain in novels or il-
lustrated books the worst productions of mod-
ern times. Others, in greater numbers, expose
upon their drawing-room tables, alongside of
collections of gross post-cards, the Illustration
Thedtrale, which contains the "popular
pieces" — that is, those in which, on each page,
the morality of the home is held up to the
greatest possible ridicule.
Still others — especially mothers — who wish
the innocence of their daughters to be above
suspicion, and who would regard it as a mis-
take personally to undertake in their regard
a necessary initiation demanded by the cir-
cumstances, consider it their duty to take them
to shows that would make a sailor blush, with-
out appearing to suspect that they can have
any consequences. They foolishly count upon
154 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
the children's supposed ignorance to safeguard
their hypothetical innocence.
Such conduct betokens an inconsistency or
a cowardice beyond comment. I do not
charge you parents, positively, with the edu-
cation of your children, if you have not the
courage; but at least be brave enough not
to endanger their virtue by the introduction
into your homes of immoral books and inde-
cent pictures, which, in spite of your vigilance,
may fall under their eyes. Always lock your
libraries and forbid your children to enter
your salons; do not take them to suggestive
theatres. In addition, watch your conversa-
tion before them, and do not give them a taste
for certain toilettes which make them appear
as if they were undressed.
There remains something to be said about
contamination while at work. Whatever the
age — twelve or thirteen as in France, or four-
teen as in Belgium — of admitting young work-
ers and apprentices, one cannot deny that it
is at a critical period, when the passions are
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 155
stirring and experience fails. Would that all
were even that old!
"But in the factory," as M. Joseph Legrand
observes very justly, "they will find persons
of fourteen, fifteen, eighteen years, and they
will work side by side with them. If it is a
school or institution in which the divisions
are mixed, the barriers between the courses
of the minims, the younger, and the oldest
have been broken down! Imagine what in
such circumstances would be the state of soul
of the foreman of division or the prefect of
studies !
"And especially in the factory is the situa-
tion complicated and aggravated by the fact
that the foremen have not the zeal or the ex-
perience of the prefects that we knew at
school; it is further complicated and aggra-
vated by the fact that the boys and girls, if
they are not in the same room, have a thou-
sand opportunities to meet on the stairs, at
the entrance, or at the exit of the works." 3
There is every evidence to prove that here
there is danger of moral contamination. One
156 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
cannot even dream of suppressing it, but only
of lessening its effects. And for this there
exist two classes of means: positive (of which
we shall speak later), consisting of moral
education at home, church, or school, before
entrance into the factory; and negative, which
we shall discuss now.
In his report upon the employers' work in
preserving youthful morality, presented at the
annual meeting of the Societe d'Economie
Sociale, May 29, 191 1, M. Legrand has enu-
merated the chief means. 4
After having shown that at the beginning
of the development of big business the em-
ployers — even Christian ones — did not suffi-
ciently consider this principal problem, he re-
calls the splendid social reform movement that
has taken place since 1870. This is the period
when M. le Comte de Mun and M. le Marquis
de la Tour du Pin founded the Catholic work-
ingmen's circles; when congresses were held
that emphasized the moral and social duties
of employers towards their work-people;
when M. Harmel in his famous factory of
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 157
Val-du-Bois, M. Feron-Vrau at Lille, M. Du-
tilleul at Armentieres, M. Bayart at Roubaix,
M. Dupres-Lepers atTourcoing, with a crowd
of prominent and pious priests, busied them-
selves with putting in practice the resolutions
of the congresses.
Such a conscientious employer is first occu-
pied with separating the sexes; then he looks
more to the recruiting of the force; fore-
women are added, who, particularly well
chosen, exercise a beneficial influence upon
their subordinates. Then he comes gradually
to group certain women in pious confraterni-
ties; to gather some men into Christian cir-
cles; to have retreats given to them, from
which they come out determined to work for
the conversion of their comrades.
Such is a rough outline as regards the
adults. But it is also an indirect way of at-
tending to the children by purifying the
moral atmosphere where they are obliged to
work. The law of 1892 came to the help of
well-intentioned individuals by abolishing the
hateful abuse of night work for women and
158 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
children; by forbidding labor dangerous to
morality; by asking employers to watch over
the maintenance of good morals and public
decency; by obliging them to keep a register
always at hand which an inspector can consult
without notice.
The decree of November 20, 1904, was also
the occasion of a very happy reform by for-
bidding workingmen to eat their lunches in
the rooms given over to labor, and by sug-
gesting to certain zealous employers the idea
of special lunch-rooms where the young men
and women, each on their own side, may
gather at noon under the direction of some
woman equal to this delicate task.
Meanwhile, no matter how numerous and
efficacious may be these negative means of
preserving morality on the street, in the fam-
ily, or in the workshop, it is clear that by them-
selves they will be insufficient. All the laws
and regulations in the world will never ex-
haust all the sources of social corruption.
Thus positive education in purity, whether
individual or collective, appears to be the
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 159
best pledge of the preservation of morality,
especially if it is accompanied, at the mo-
ment determined upon, by all the legal and
social additions of which we shall speak.
77. Positive Education in Purity: Individ- _^
ual Method
This programme comprises two periods, one
concerning the education of childhood, and
the other, that of adolescence.
The period devoted to childhood is itself
divided into two very distinct phases: the
first extends from the cradle to the crisis of
puberty; the second takes in the whole of
this crisis and the critical passage from child-
hood to youth, from negative to positive in-
nocence.
(1) Childhood. — We have established that A/
during the first phase of childhood, with rare
exceptions, the education in purity ought to
be indirect, and that the object is not to en- ^
lighten the child's mind upon this particular
point, but to form his will. There will then
160 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
be no scientific initiation pure and simple.
Until about ten or twelve, children do not
generally show any need of knowing things
concerning the sex problem, and to initiate
them scientifically into such things, whether
collectively or individually, without a prep-
aration of their will, would be deliberately
to expose them to the very dangers against
which one pretends to guard them.
There should be no initiation of any sort
upon the precise point of chastity, even on
the supposition of a previous moral education.
Because, for one thing, no such question ordi-
narily presents itself to the mind of children
before the crisis of puberty; and besides,
their will has not had the time to strengthen
itself sufficiently to withstand the dangers that
may come from any initiation, even though
mild and healthy. Do we not know by faith,
indeed, that all children, without exception,
are born in an abnormal condition; that the
consequences of original sin weigh upon each
of them; that, in face of the inherited fire of
concupiscence, their will, detached from God,
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 161
its living principle, is unstable and conse-
quently incapable of mastering the instincts
of sensuality that a precocious initiation
would certainly arouse?
Undoubtedly the grace received in Baptism
establishes in its way the moral equilibrium
destroyed by the Fall. But if grace perfects
nature, it does not make up for its activity.
The infused and supernatural virtue of chas-
tity, with all the others that the child receives
in Baptism, in order to give its share of help,
needs to be used intelligently by the super-
naturalized will; to be expressed by acts at
the same time natural and supernatural, which
develop in the sensitive faculties an acquired
virtue of chastity, destined to serve as a ma-
terial foundation for the infused virtue it-
self which supernaturalizes it and in its turn
uses it.
In seeing that the child can himself effi-
ciently employ his infused virtue of chastity,
the following course is imposed upon those
charged with his education:
They should urge the child to receive the **
i62 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
Sacraments and to practise piety; for it is of
faith that the Sacraments received in the de-
sired conditions — that is, as long as no ob-
stacle is placed to them — increase sanctifying
grace in us, and through it all the virtues of
of which it is the source. At the same time
our merits obtain for us from God a direct
increase of grace and virtue. So that, when
the time comes for the child knowingly to
exercise the virtue of chastity, he will find it
strong and able to conquer the obstacles that
it may encounter in his little nature, incom-
pletely educated and curbed. But this prac-
tice of piety and use of the Sacraments ought
to be organized in an intelligent way by par-
ents. I mean that they should not be culti-
vated for themselves, but that they should be
made to serve an integral religious education
of the child's will and all his faculties.
In that consists the great art of education.
One sees, indeed, some parents who early train
their children to the practice of piety, to the
frequentation of the Sacraments, but who
neglect to knit this up with their daily life.
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 163
Thus they destroy with one hand what they
build with the other. This is absolutely il-
logical.
Since it is a matter of faith that all the vir-
tues are connected together in charity, and
that, besides, the increase of the supernatural
virtues is partly conditioned by the exercise
of the corresponding natural virtues acquired
under the impulsion of charity and with the
co-operation of the supernatural virtues: let
us not, then, separate in the education of our
children what God has joined together. Let
them pray, confess, and communicate, but so
that their prayers, confessions, and commun-
ions help them to become more and more
docile, respectful, industrious, conscientious,
modest, mortified, self-controlled, energetic,
unselfish, self-denying, and very far from the
example of pious children who are disobe-
dient, disrespectful, presumptuous, lazy, pleas-
ure-seeking, grumbling, effeminate, and vain.
There is a complete physical, moral, and
intellectual gymnastic to give them methodi-
cally, by appealing to all the resources of
1 64 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
nature and grace, such as the practice of piety
and the use of the Sacraments; elevated mo-
tives of action, as the love of God, the imita-
tion of our Saviour and the saints ; the author-
ity of the Church, of parents, of teachers; the
love of the Ideal residing in the humblest cir-
cumstances; the devotion to duty under all
forms; respect for conscience; the instinctive
horror of sin; the fear of judgment, death,
hell; the attraction of heaven; the force of
good example; the sentiment of responsibility.
Negative innocence, in which one would
keep them so long as there is no good reason
to remove their ignorance, would not allow
this method of integral religious education,
followed continually until the crisis of pu-
berty and beyond. For during this time their
will should be formed, their moral power of
resisting increased.
Habituated, by repeated acts of self-control,
to react against the excesses of the imagina-
tion and the senses, they will be completely
armed to resist, when the time comes, the
dangers that may arise from necessary revela-
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 165
tions. All the natural and supernatural mo-
tives and means of action that they will have
used from childhood to conquer the defects
and acquire the virtues proper to their age,
they will spontaneously concentrate upon this
particular point of positive education in pur-
ity. The supernatural virtue of chastity that
God will have increased in them in propor-
tion to their merits, they can then use naturally
and intelligently, without this knowledge
(which has become necessary, but should be
imparted with wisdom and according to the
needs of their weak personal exigencies) im-
peding right action.
In these conditions of elevated morality and
of previous education of the will of children,
the question of positive training in purity,
employing a sane and progressive and strictly
individual method, does not present any se-
rious difficulty.
The problem is different, however, if it
concerns children badly brought up, open to
the caprices of their imagination, never hav-
ing struggled to conquer themselves nor to
166 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
utilize, in such self-conquest, all the motives
and means of action furnished by nature and
by grace.
Now, at bottom, it is because it is too often
thus — it is because parents do not fulfil their
whole duty as Catholic educators — that so
many eminent moralists and psychologists
dread the dangers of any initiation what-
ever, scientific or otherwise, and have such
a decided preference for the method of si-
lence.
From their point of view — that is, con-
sidering the problem of educating in purity
relatively to the children badly brought up
or not brought up at all — they are correct.
Their mistake is in generalizing, and prefer-
ring in theory and in practice, for all chil-
dren, the method of silence to every other.
Unfortunately, this is not a remedy, especially
in the actual circumstances where it does not
depend upon parents and teachers indefinitely
to prolong this ignorance by destroying all the
evil individual or social sources of corruption.
Let us unite both parties by giving to Chris-
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 167
tian educators the method of silence during
the first phase of childhood, at least until the
crisis of puberty, and show to all educators
the dangers of scientific initiation.
Let us further agree to oblige parents to
give to their children during this period an
integral religious education. But let us loy-
ally acknowledge that for those children for
whom has come the hour of necessary revela-
tions, it is better for us generally to submit
to the necessity of healthily initiating them
instead of placing them in the necessity of a
vicious initiation by blinding ourselves to cir-
cumstances or by shoving off on God and
grace what God and nature have placed
partly in our hands.
As to badly reared children, that is an-
other and a thorny question. We shall obtain
nothing from the parents, and it is undoubt-
edly better to ask nothing. The heavy task,
then, falls upon us priests, confessors, teach-
ers, to remake on better lines a badly begun
education, and to instruct them individually,
168 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
according to the measure of their needs and
our resources.
Those who individually escape us we can
reach in our catechetical classes, our schools
and day-nurseries, instructing them collec-
tively and attempting to perfect, according to
our means, their moral education: negatively,
by subtracting as much as possible from the
dangers of the home, the workshop, and the
street; positively, by working for the forma-
tion of their intellect and their heart, and by
encouraging in them the habits of piety and
of frequenting the Sacraments.
(2) From Childhood to Adolescence. —
Suppose, then, that we are considering well
brought up children, accustomed from their
earliest years to conquer themselves and spon-
taneously to have recourse to God, to their
parents, or their confessor each time a new
difficulty arises.
The crisis of puberty comes. For all sorts
of physiological, psychological and moral
reasons, which vary from one child to an-
other, and which would take too long to enu-
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 169
merate here, there happens in their little lives
a profound change whose secret escapes them,
but which forces itself on their attention by
its effects. If these children really have ab-
solute confidence in their mother, for ex-
ample; if each time an embarrassing question
has presented itself they have instinctively
turned towards her to obtain its solution; so
now, too, they will go to her. It is impossible
to say beforehand under what form they will
present their difficulties and express their
doubts, suspicions, sufferings to her. That
will depend upon the mentality and tempera-
ment of each one.
But their mother, who has their confidence
and who knows them intimately from having
followed them for ten years or more, will
know beforehand of their need. Something
or other will make her divine the state of soul
in which they are struggling. She will help
them, with an art peculiar to mothers, to
formulate their questions, because she knows
their vocabulary, their cast of mind, and their
way of understanding or not understanding a
170 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
hint. Here, where science would be impo-
tent, her common sense, sustained and guided
by her affection and the very vivid sense of
her responsibility, will amply suffice.
Recently I saw a mother who has half a
dozen children, the oldest seventeen years old
and the youngest about ten. As we talked
about this question of training to purity, she
told me that she had instructed all, even the
youngest, as to the way in which children
come into the world. The reasons that she
gave me for this initiative were perfectly con-
vincing. I then asked what impression these
revelations had made upon the spirit of her
daughters.
"An excellent impression," she replied.
"The youngest, in particular, was so enrap-
tured that she cried out: 'When I am grown
I shall have many children, because now I
know that they will be good to me!'" This
was naive, but how touching!
"Were your explanations enough," I in-
quired further, "or did they not seek to know
more?"
■fj^vJLif
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 171
"No," she replied, "because I have accus-
tomed my children never to seek elsewhere,
nor for more than I tell them. They are con-
vinced that I have told them the truth, that
the rest does not concern them, and that it
would be wrong to pass beyond my prohibi-
tion. Now, they have such a horror of what
is wrong that, for example, they cannot under-
stand how any one can laugh at an evil action
cleverly performed, or at a funny lie, a bold
robbery, a crime astutely committed."
The partisans of silence will undoubtedly
object that this is an exceptional case. Cer-
tainly; but it is necessary to call attention to
what makes it exceptional. Now the exception
does not concern the initiation itself, but the
education of these children. And the excep- c*^a.
tion, from this point of view, can easily be-
come the rule. It is because these children
were exceptionally well reared that they could
be so easily initiated. If all Christian moth-
ers would take the trouble to bring up their
children as this one brought up hers, the posi-
172 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
tive education in purity would not present
so many difficulties.
On the other hand, if some children pass-
ing through the crisis of puberty preserve
their innocence in virtue of their ignorance,
this also is an exception, but this exception
cannot become the rule. Observe the differ-
ence, for it is essential.
But, some one may ask, what if some chil-
dren, more curious by disposition and more
anxious to know, press their mother with
questions more difficult than those concern-
ing maternity; if from the effect they wish
immediately to ascend to the cause, what at-
titude should the mother take? This will
depend upon the children and the peculiar
needs of each one.
A mother whose son, about sixteen years
of age, had to leave home for the university,
one day took him aside. "My child," she
said in substance, "you are soon to leave us
for surroundings that are not at all like home.
Certainly, in this environment, if you are not
prepared, you will learn things that I do not
Jt
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 173
want you to learn from any one but me." And
she then placed before him, with admirable
simplicity, the difficult problem of the sexes.
For reply, the young man, more moved by
this confidence of his mother than by what
he had heard, put his arms around her neck
and embraced her. Since then he has given
her an affection and recognition of which his
father might well be jealous; for it is to his
mother, and to the revelations she made, that
he owes his safety.
Another exception, some one will object.
Yes, but one which, if mothers or confessors
know how to get the confidence of youths, can
become the rule. The lesson which stands out
from this example, taken from a thousand, is
very instructive. Until his seventeenth year
this young man was content to know what his
mother had been pleased to tell him of the
problem of maternity. On the advice or com-
mand of his mother, he had not sought fur-
ther. Admitting that seventeen years is the
extreme limit when a young man will not
try to satisfy his curiosity on these delicate
174 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
matters, and that at fifteen, if not before, he
pressed his mother or his confessor for more
precise knowledge, does the problem of edu-
cating to purity therefore change its com-
plexion? It does not seem so.
Indeed, one cannot, a priori, assign the age
or the exact measure of necessary revelations.
What is certain is that, made by a mother or
a confessor in whom the child has absolute
confidence, and to a child who has received
an integral religious education, these revela-
tions do not bring any danger. In every case
they mean less danger than a prolonged igno-
rance, which, to-day or to-morrow, will leave
the child at the mercy of circumstances and
vicious companions.
Suppose the young man goes to the univer-
sity? Immediately he will be exposed to the
influence of strong spirits who will take a
malignant delight in enlightening him. My
experience of university life, in the capacity
of a teacher of young men, has made me very
sure on this point.
Suppose he goes to work? The absolute or
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 175
relative promiscuity of the sexes, the conver-
sation of comrades, their freedom of gesture
and language, will quickly destroy his igno-
rance and forever compromise his innocence.
What if he goes on a farm, or into service
in a village, or clerks in a big firm or store?
This precocious menial condition will deliver
him up, bound hand and foot, to the most
nefarious influences — to those of the cellar
during the day, the garret at night, the street
during hours of leisure.
Hence the only question that always re-
mains the same is: Between the certain dan-
gers of a vicious initiation and the hypotheti-
cal danger of a healthy initiation has one the
right to hesitate?
I have said nothing as yet of young women
of the world, and for a reason. Is it not ad-
mitted, in theory, that they wish to know
nothing before marriage, and that one ought
not to trouble their peace?
Before such a prejudice can be dissipated
it must run its time. The facts, however, are
all against such a position. I am willing to
176 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
admit that young women, since they remain
longer than young men under the protection
of the home, do not encounter the same dan-
gers.
On this head their relative ignorance can
be prolonged. But are not our actual customs
profoundly at variance with the holiest laws
of the family? Is it not between fifteen and
seventeen years of age that young women
make their entrance into the world? — and
such a world! Is it not a fact that at all en-
tertainments and sports and reunions, all
trips, theatre parties, and concerts, young men
and women are associated? Is it not true that
they are exposed to the seeing, hearing and
reading of everything? Is not the danger of
flirting, thanks to the worldly usages that the
majority of Christian parents feel obliged to
follow, constantly close to them?
Consequently, is it better to leave them to
themselves, under cover of ignorance often
more feigned than real, or, before launching
them into society, to call their attention to cer-
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 177
tain delicate points, by appealing to all the
resources that a primary Christian education
has given them? I leave to the reader the
conclusion, sure in advance, if he is not the
victim of prejudice, that he will decide in
favor of a sane and progressive initiation,
made to each particular child by his natural
educators.
III. Positive Education in Purity: Collec-
tive Method
(1) Moral Education of Adolescence. — So
far we have only spoken of the individual
method of educating to purity. But is there
not room, once the individual education is
assured, for a collective education?
Integral education in purity, then, em-
braces three very distinct phases. During the
first period, which includes childhood prop-
erly speaking up to the crisis of puberty, the
educators concentrate their efforts upon the
moral preparation of the child. They are to
be occupied entirely with the formation of
178 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
his will, and should leave his intellect in igno-
rance of questions concerning chastity.
During the second phase, which extends
throughout the crisis of puberty, they will ap-
ply themselves to making the child pass from
negative to positive innocence, by means of a
common-sense initiation, whose measure and
progress will be governed by the peculiar
mentality of each child and the particular
circumstances under which his need of know-
ing is manifested.
The third period embraces adolescence
proper. This period includes all the young
men and women whom their parents and
teachers and confessors have individually ini-
tiated into the mysteries of chastity by basing
their teaching upon an integral religious edu-
cation. It is only, then, for such young men
and women that the question arises whether
it would be well to complete their individual
initiation by a collective moral education.
Let the reader weigh well these words:
collective moral education. There is no ques-
tion here of collective scientific education.
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 179
Such an education implies technical teaching.
Now I do not believe it would be easy to
form a group of young men, even though
serious, who would apply themselves earnest-
ly to the necessities of this teaching. There
would always be some in the number who, in
order to appear before the others as less chaste
than they are and less serious than they ought
to be, would pun upon the crudest words or
turn into ridicule the most circumstantial
technical details.
Besides, this scientific collective education,
where the technical explanation appears on
the ground floor, is not necessary. For young
people already individually initiated, a moral
education suffices.
But what would it embrace and what ad-
vantages are to be gained by making it collec-
tive? This remains to be shown.
The collective moral education of which
we are now speaking differs essentially from
the scientific education in that it contains no
technical or direct teaching made to a group
concerning the problem of the sexes. There
180 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
is no question of establishing, for the use of
young people already individually initiated,
a course in medicine or gynecology, but sim-
ply of calling their attention, in appropriate
lectures, to certain social prejudices relative
to chastity which occur in the different sur-
roundings in which they will be thrown; the
dangers of a certain camaraderie in the shop,
at the university, and especially where the
literary and athletic customs of to-day as-
semble young people; the injurious influence
of bad conversation, of romantic or gamy lit-
erature, of theatres, moving-pictures, cafes,
concerts, gambling; the respect due to all
women, no matter what they are; the nature
and impropriety of flirting; the disastrous
consequences of immorality from the individ-
ual, family, and social side; the possibility
and good effects of chastity, despite the ab-
surd theories whose echo will have reached
even them; the beauty of true and healthy
love such as the Church contemplates in mar-
riage and the home; the Christian atmosphere
that ought to surround their friendships; the
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 181
natural and supernatural means that they
ought to use to cultivate in themselves the
delicate flower of purity, and to make its per-
fume exhale around them.
This programme, as one sees, is at the same
time definite and vast. To realize its neces-
sity, one has only to reflect that in a few
months these young people will leave home
or college and find themselves in a completely
different environment, where, doubtless, they
will be well surrounded, whether it be at a
university or elsewhere, with perfectly organ-
ized institutions, but free to enter or not, and
in any case they will not remain more than an
hour or so a week. Left to themselves be-
tween times, what will they do if they are en-
tirely ignorant of the difficulties attending
them, and which I shall point out?
And even if they were for a long time con-
versant with these difficulties and firmly de-
termined to overcome them, they do not know
on what side of them are young people shar-
ing the same ideas and asking only for union
in order to support the struggle.
182 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
That, then, is why it is advisable that such
a moral education should have a collective
character. On finding themselves in the
world, in the shop, the university, the tech-
nical school, these young people, nourished
together with the same ideas, leavened with
the same zeal, will instinctively approach each
other, and, alongside the groups of pleasure-
seekers bent merely upon amusement and
gathering others into the orbit of their de-
baucheries, will form other groups, big and
little, which will have no other aim than to
guard inviolate their virtue and to make it
shine forth without boasting, but with firm-
ness, in their conversation and conduct. They
will assess the group in order to have good
books and recreative and improving enter-
tainments. Together they will go to church,
frequent the libraries, the lecture halls, the
associations of young people that priests and
zealous and intelligent lay folk have organ-
ized for our youth.
Should any one say that this collective
moral education is impossible, is it not the
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 183
fault of the educators rather than of the
young folks? In our fairly large parishes,
however, and even in our villages, but espe-
cially in our colleges, it will not be difficult
to find a priest capable of gathering together
the elite of our young people, and organizing
lectures for their benefit. There will be less
question of eloquence than of speaking from
the heart and with the authority of the priest-
hood, utilizing intelligently the articles and
books, so numerous to-day, that have treated
these questions from a frank and Christian
point of view.
The problem is a little more delicate where
our young women are concerned, but it is not
more insoluble there. I know a boarding-
school where the chaplain gathered together
the oldest of the last year, and with perfect
tact, without entering at all into useless tech-
nical details, seriously prepared them to meet
the world, to react against its prejudices and
its customs, and to prepare themselves in the
light of the foundation and organization of a
home.
1 84 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
Under these conditions, is the chastity of
adolescents guaranteed forever? Assuredly
not. This collective moral education ought
to be continued wherever it is possible to as-
semble the youth of the schools, of the work-
aday world, and of society. But on this point
there has already been undertaken much ad-
mirable work, such as retreats for adult men
and women; retreats for workingmen; study
classes for young men and women; students'
libraries, lecture halls, courses of religious in-
struction, apologetic lectures, popular moving
pictures, athletic clubs and others which, if
they have some real inconveniences, at least
have the advantage of drawing our young
people for some hours from surroundings
where their virtue would be seriously endan-
gered.
There is still much to do, but the impor-
tant thing is that notice is being taken and a
beginning made. Now there is no doubt that
we are as observant in France as elsewhere.
The works that I am going to cite show faith,
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 185
and it is proper that I should enumerate
them all.
"In many factories," M. Legrand tells us,
"once or twice a week, the young workers
are assembled for the teaching of the cate-
chism, church history, and religion. Fre-
quently for the women it is a religious, the
Sister of the factory, who has this duty; else-
where it is the wife or daughter of the em-
ployer; for the boys it is often the chaplain
of the village institutions or the curate of
the parish. The course is optional, but it is
usually well attended. . . . There are also
the retreats which have formed an elite of
Catholic workingmen and workingwomen
who have been the most valuable allies of the
employers in improving the moral tone of
the factories.
"For three or four years this method has
been applied to the young workingmen. As
a start they have been assembled in small
groups in the protectories for two or three
days. Almost four hundred children profited
by this last year. Encouraged by the success
1 86 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
of these attempts, it is planned to construct a
house to give retreats to adolescents. There
will issue thence an elite class upon which we
can count to perfect the moral formation of
their comrades." 5
We have already remarked that in Ger-
many the imperial government and the va-
rious states and municipalities have applied
themselves to organize their efforts upon the
basis of a thought-out doctrinal programme,
of which we have quoted the negative part.
Here are the positive measures that are prin-
cipally recommended for the struggle against
demoralizing literature:
"(a) The satisfaction given to the youthful
imagination by a healthy literature (in the
schools and public libraries, lecture halls, as-
sociations of young people, by the publication
of juveniles), by varied bodily exercise, such
as walking, sports, games and manual labor.
"(b) The opposing of the excessive desire
of children to read, by exciting to physical
exercises."
(2) /Esthetic Education. — There is no
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 187
manual for education in purity that does not
recommend to educators the withdrawal from
children of all licentious images, insolent
nudities, and pornographic pictures. One
cannot, indeed, insist too much upon this point
in our age of shameless literature and so-
called art. But how can one guard against
all dangers in this field ! What child can walk
along a busy street without having his atten-
tion attracted to some obscenity, or to some
shocking reproduction of a pretended master-
piece? If children wish to buy post-cards,
their choice must be made in the presence of
more or less immoral views exposed in the
show-cases, or they are obliged to consult al-
bums containing all the nudities of our sa-
lons. Despite their good will, their most
intimate feelings will be bruised if they resist
the temptation to look, or wonderfully trou-
bled if they yield for the slightest moment to
an unhealthy curiosity.
Besides, it is not only shameless post-cards
that at one time or another may compromise
the purity of children and of adolescents.
1 88 INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
Are not our galleries and museums on cer-
tain days open to all ? But why should I speak
of museums and galleries! In some of our
churches, in many of our cathedrals, in our
most famous palaces, in our public parks, are
there not statues and groups upon which the
eyes of our young men and women naturally
fall? Nevertheless, it would not occur to
any one to remove all such works, or to for-
bid children to gaze upon them.
Hence I ask if the means of lessening this
danger of the eyes be not early to teach chil-
dren carefully to guard their glances and to
accustom them as much to a horror of ugliness
as of evil, and to a love of the beautiful as
well as of the good? In other words, I ask if
in our programme of studies we cannot in-
troduce, with the secondary object of protect-
ing the souls of our children, a strong aesthetic
education?
Let no one distort my idea. I do not pre-
tend for a moment that there should be for
children a complete course in aesthetics, where,
INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE 189
for instance, the question of the nude in art
would be discussed with proofs.
It is with aesthetic education as with educa-
tion in purity. To make it efficient, account
must be taken of the modesty of children and
of the peculiar needs of each age. In the first
phase of childhood one can, without too much
trouble, awaken in them the taste for the
beautiful by calling their attention to the spec-
tacles of nature, to the masterpieces of re-
ligious art which throng our churches, and
whose artistic reproductions are now within
the reach of the whole world.
Later, when they are able to reflect, it will
be possible to show them that there is a way
of seeing in the purest masterpieces of reli-
gious or profane art something else than the
glorification of the flesh.
Is there not, indeed, a real danger in mak-
ing adolescents see the nude only under an
aspect of immorality? Is not this to make it a
fixed idea with them, so that they will con-
sider their morals shattered if by chance a
i 9 o INNOCENCE AND IGNORANCE
little nudity should be called to their atten-
tion?
One thing is certain, it is necessary to ap-
peal to their delicacy of soul, to their love of
virtue, to keep them from exposing themselves
to temptation out of gaiety of heart. But if
this strong moral education has been com-
pleted by a serious aesthetic study, do we not
in advance guarantee many of our young
people against vain scruples, and, what is
more important, against the instinctive ten-
dency to seek after "forbidden fruit"?
We shall say no more on this point. The
question has not yet been settled, and it is full
of difficulties. But when the purity of chil-
dren is at stake we ought to spare no pains
in helping them to furbish their weapons in
the battle for the Ideal, and to show all the
valor of honorable and Christian men.
1 La Reforme Sociale, Paris, 191 1, 1-16 aout, p. 129.
2 Id., aout, 191 1, p. 153.
3 Id., 16 Octobre, 191 1, pp. 435 et seq.
4 Id., pp. 433-442.
B Id., pp. 439, 44L
"Life is too short for reading inferior books." — Bryce
Clean literature and clean womanhood are
the keystones of civilization — and
MY
UNKNOWN CHUM
("AGUECHEEK")
Foreword by HENRY GARRITY
"is the cleanest and best all-round book in
the English Language"
"An Ideal Chum." You will read it often and like it better
the oftener you read it — once read it will be your chum as
it is now the chum of thousands. You will see France,
Belgium, England, Italy and America — men and women in
anew light that has nought to do with the horrors of war.
It fulfills to the letter Lord Rosebery's definition of the
threefold function of a book— "To furnish Information,
Literature, Recreation."
What critical book-lovers say:
SIR CHARLES FITZPATRICK, Chief Justice of Canada: '"My Unknown
Chum' is a wonderful book. I can repeat some of the pages almost by
heart. I buy it to give to those I love and to friends who can appreciate
a good book."
THE N. Y. SUN: "They don't write such English nowadays. The book is
charming. "
PHILIP GIBBS, most brilliant of the English war correspondents: '"My
Unknown Chum' is delightful."
Price, $1.50 net. Postpaid, $1.65
THE DEVIN-ADAIR COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
437 Fifth Avenue New York, U. S. A.
"Men are Nothing, but a MAN is Everything."
— Napoleon.
Books Are Nothing, But a
Good Book Is Everything
Youth ripening into manhood or womanhood will find MY
UNKNOWN CHUM the best of comrades all through
life. Preachy?, <Not a bit of it! He is a delightful chum
who introduces you to about all that is worth while. He
will go with you to the theatre — take you behind the scenes
if you like, tell you about the art, the soul of the playhouse,
with never a word or thought of the sensualistic rubbish
that features only the flesh-mummer, her toothbrush bril-
liancy and the stage door — that leads to so many family
scandals, domestic wreckage and divorce.
J. A. JUDD, of the Literary Digest:
"I love books. I love my library, in which are more than three hundred
of the world's best works. If driven by adversity to a hall bedroom, I
could select five books that would supply me with delightful reading matter
for the remainder of my days — the first would be 'My Unknown Chum.' "
CARDINAL GASQUET, the world's for etnost scholar:
"I have read 'My Unknown Chum' with the preatest possible pleasure."
GOVERNOR DAVID I. WALSH, of Massachusetts:
" 'My Unknown Chum' — I cannot too strongly express the pleasure
and companionship I found in this excellent book. It is all that is claimed
for it — even more. It is not only a companion, but a friend."
ALICE M. BRADLEY, author of the Belasco production—
"The Governor's Lady":
"The title, 'My Unknown Chum,' most aptly describes the book. It is
a chum, a confidant, with old-time manners and all-time observation and
philosophy. He takes you with him and delights you. What delicious
humor!"
THE BAKER & TAYLOR COMPANY— the largest whole-
sale booksellers:
"'My Unknown Chum' is a wonderful book — appeals to the cultivated
classes — has a remarkable sale. We sell more copies than we do of many
•best selling' novels."
"Were people in general not willing accomplices,
there would be No Sweating System — no unfair
Competition, and no oppression of the kind that
leads to White Slavery "
CONSUMERS M2
WAGE EARNERS
The Ethics of Buying Cheap
By J. ELLIOT ROSS, Ph.D.
i-
An exposure of the vice-compelling unjust wages of
these troublous times — and a solution. This is a book
that should be read by every buyer, every seller, every
consumer and every wage earner. It should be studied
carefully by fathers and mothers who have children that
must work.
THESE VITAL PROBLEMS
ARE ANALYZED:
Obligations of the Consuming Class
What Should the Individual Consumer Do?
What Is a Just Employer?
Theory of Industrial Organization
Industrial Conditions — Wages, Health, Morals
Price $1.00 net— $1.15 Postpaid
THE DEVIN-ADAIR COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Ready Soon!
THE RIGHT
TO WORK
BY
J. ELLIOT ROSS, Ph.D.
THE DEVIN-ADAIR COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
'
/
./
«r
J
RETURN
T0^+>
CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT
202 Main Library
/
3237
LOAN PERIOD 1
HOME USE
2
3
4
5
6
ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS
Renewals and Recharges may be made 4 days prior to the due date.
Books may be Renewed by calling 642-3405.
DUE AS STAMPED BELOW
JUN 17 1989
MAY i 4 \W
FORM NO. DD6
S
S
S
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
BERKELEY, CA 94720