Stephen Paget

“ It is the children that we have got to read; not books about them, but them. I doubt whether psychologists understand ordinary children better than a wise old family nurse understands them. Boys and girls are human beings: they were not discovered by science: they refuse [59] to be elucidated by science. The way for us to help them is not by psychology, but by faith, self-preparation, courage, and common sense. ”

“ So many of us hang about the child’s mind, in a timid sort of way, hesitating to go in. We look up at the windows, we peep through the letter-box, we try the back door, we ring the bell very gently—the left-hand bell, which is marked Servants; we dare not ring the visitors’ bell, nor ply the knocker. ”

“ Only, if they who are incurious during childhood do tend to be passionless in later years, that is no reason why we should admire them as children. [19] For, in the design of our nature, and in the fabric of our nature, there is a place, and a very honourable place, for passion held under control. And they who have nothing to control are to be congratulated, because they are out of the way of temptation; but we admire, even more, those who are in the way of temptation and withstand it. ”

“ What harm can it do to a child, to know that children are born of their mothers? What does harm the minds of children is not our plain speaking; it is their own secret reading, gossiping, and imagining.
Now let me venture a bit further. In the kingdom of a child’s mind, it is not one set of thoughts, but two, which gradually rise to power, as the child grows to adult life. Right away from the nursery age, these two ideas are important above all others; important alike [26] to the child and to us. One is the child’s notions about sex ”

“ We have no set method of talking to children about sex, nor of warning older boys and girls against the miseries into which it may, if they let it, bring them. Of course, this want of agreement is not altogether our fault; we are so divided, because [21] the children are so diverse. Their differences of temperament are reflected in our different ways of dealing with them. The fact remains, that we have no common plan, no authorised programme: and, if ever we do invent one, which we never shall, it will not suit all the children. Each of us, in this perplexity, judges for himself or herself ”

“ Science is not like that: there is no chanciness in her: we inevitably agree with her. If a chemical test goes wrong, we know that we have done it wrong. This eternal certainty gives to physics and chemistry, somehow, [40] authority over the vagrant minds of boys and girls; and this authority, surely, must help to keep them able to resist temptation.
These antidotes and this tonic are all very well; but the best thing of all would be, for all boys and girls, unfailing belief in what we call the Spirit of God, or the Presence of God, in their daily affairs. ”

“ I do believe that these two ideas—the idea of sex, and the idea of God—are of the utmost importance to us in our dealings with children and with adolescents. If we are to think of constructing and reconstructing human lives as if they were houses, let us have the proper materials for it, and let us handle them wisely. ”

“ It is a good rule, surely, that [22] we should prepare ourselves and arm ourselves against the shock of a sudden question. We must have our answers ready. We must rehearse, we must learn almost word for word, as it were by heart, what we will say, when the inevitable demand for facts is sprung on us. ”

“ As the children ask very absurd questions about sex, so they ask very absurd questions about God. As we are taken aback, and say foolish things to them over the one subject, so we do over the other. As we ought to prepare ourselves for the one opportunity, so we ought for the other. As we must answer properly about sex, so we must answer properly about God. It is bad enough to shut them up over sex ”

“ But we are still at sixes and sevens how to tell children about their bodily nature. We let them alone, they let us alone; we wait, they wait; neither we nor they like to [55] begin. We do not know what they are thinking of. But we know this much, that there are two sets of thoughts which must, simply must, be growing up together in their minds—the idea of sex, and the idea of God. We cannot help them without self-preparation ”

“ We are too ready, it may be, to give all our praise to those who are wholly incurious; we call them healthy-minded, pure-minded, and [15] so forth. We admire them because they take no interest in this part of their natural life, just as we admire them because they take no interest in the working of their brains and their digestive organs. ”

“ But there is nothing very admirable in this blank indifference toward the affairs of the body; it is good common sense, but we ought to think twice before we regard it as a virtue: it is altogether negative, and virtues are something positive. We can safely afford to keep some of our admiration for the children who are inquisitive. [16] Besides, we have no business to put the possession of sex on a level with the possession of digestive organs. ”

“ If this be true, or anywhere near true, that a measure of inquisitiveness in childhood, and a measure of passion in early adult life, are welcome signs of a sane mind in a [20] sane body, such as Juvenal bids us pray for, then it follows that we ought to give careful regard to these inquisitive children, and wise and honest answers to their embarrassing questions.
But we grown-up folk are not agreed, nor ever shall be, what to tell them, and when to tell it. ”

“ Please observe that they not are, but is, one man; they are so closely united that they is one man. It follows, that what we call temptation addresses itself not to the flesh alone, but also to the reasonable soul. ”

“ And there are some boys and girls—happily it is a small minority—who are so passionate and so wilful that they hardly stop to reckon what they are doing.
Of course, we have some antidotes against temptation. One of [36] them is the right employment of mind and body; but the mind must not be employed at haphazard, and the body must not be over-fatigued. The employment of the mind must have a touch of refinement or fastidiousness: things which are lurid and vulgar must be recognised for what they are: the boys and girls must be fond of “good form” ”

“ Whatever we say to the children we must never say that. But who will teach us what we ought to say? Perhaps we might make a rule that we will try not to play down to their childish notions. On the contrary, we will try to tell them that our grown-up notions are hardly less childish than theirs. [29] We cannot worship their little graven image, but we can confess to them that our own image is a very poor thing. ”

“ Besides, it is the accepted way of intelligent children to be inquisitive: it is their birthright to ask us any amount of questions. A child who never asks a question about sex is indeed, so far as that goes, a backward child: what we call [18] unobservant. In some ways, this non-questioning mind is good for young children; but surely it is unnatural that the children should attain to adolescence and still be ignorant of what they are.
Whether these incurious children tend to be passionless in early adult life, I do not know ”

“ Finally, what they need is not physiology alone, but physiology and faith together. There has been a great deal too much science talked about adolescence. Too much physiology, pathology, psychology—not that psychology really is a [57] science—too much analysis, too many statistics. If any of you, as parents or as teachers, do require a short science-book, there is Dr. Starr’s The Adolescent Period. It has its faults. It is unduly apprehensive of some things which are not important. It makes too much of those boys and girls who are abnormal. Some children are abnormal ”

“ All round him, day after day, newspapers [34] and books and shop windows and theatres, and other men’s talk, and the look of the crowd in the streets, are alluding to it. His pride is wounded, and the more he tries not to think of it, the more it hurts. All young men covet and pursue the experiences of life ”

“ The employment of the body must have a touch of discipline or training: outdoor exercise, athletics in moderation, [37] fresh air, plain food, cold water. If I could be a little boy again, I would join the Boy Scouts; if I could be a young man again, I would get on without alcohol and cigarettes. ”

“ We are concerned here with the schoolroom years, the threshold years, say, from 14 to 18. All of us, when we think seriously about boys and girls from 14 to 18 years old, have at the back of our minds the thought of sex. And you must forgive me, if I use very plain words this evening: for I hope and believe that you will prefer, from a man of my profession, plain speaking to roundabout phrases.
My theme is adolescence: I have [13] no right to talk about small children. But how can I help myself? Boys and girls begin to be vaguely conscious of sex, long before they are 14 ”

“ There is one more bit of advice, in these days, which we might give to young men. The War [52] seems to make it somehow wrong, that a young man, of decent character, in good health and steady work, should remain unmarried. He ought to marry, that sons of his may serve their country, filling the empty places of the young men who have died for their country. Before the War, it was nobody’s business but his own, whether a young man were married or single. ”

“ They have gone ahead so fast, and their eyes are so dazzled, that some of them will not stop to read our danger-signals. Most of us have some influence over them, some of us have great influence. Things already are bad enough, and, in all probability, will be worse in the near future. ”

“ To these approved antidotes, let me, as a doctor, add a good tonic, to steady the nerves of adolescence. I prescribe a full dose of the natural sciences. Some people believe in what are called “hobbies” for boys and girls. I do not think much of hobbies, if it comes to nothing more than photographing or stamp-collecting or [38] carpentering at odd moments; but I love to see boys and girls working hard at physics and chemistry. It is a grand thing for them: it really does tranquillise and strengthen them ”

“ In adolescence, in early adult life, there comes a heavy strain on these two ideas, and unless we have built as we ought, some portion of the edifice will be in danger of falling. The point is, that we must somehow manage to build these two ideas together ”