The Note-Books of Samuel Butler

With regard to sexual matters, the best opinion of our best medical men, the practice of those nations which have proved most vigorous and comely, the evils that have followed this or that, the good that has attended upon the other should be ascertained by men who, being neither moral nor immoral and not caring two straws what the conclusion arrived at might be, should desire only to get hold of the best available information.  The result should be written down with some fulness and put before the young of both sexes as soon as they are old enough to understand such matters at all.  There should be no mystery or reserve.  None but the corrupt will wish to corrupt facts; honest people will accept them eagerly, whatever they may prove to be, and will convey them to others as accurately as they can.  On what pretext therefore can it be well that knowledge should be withheld from the universal gaze upon a matter of such universal interest?  It cannot be pretended that there is nothing to be known on these matters beyond what unaided boys and girls can be left without risk to find out for themselves.  Not one in a hundred who remembers his own boyhood will say this.  How, then, are they excusable who have the care of young people and yet leave a matter of such vital importance so almost absolutely to take care of itself, although they well know how common error is, how easy to fall into and how disastrous in its effects both upon the individual and the race?

Next to sexual matters there are none upon which there is such complete reserve between parents and children as on those connected with money.  The father keeps his affairs as closely as he can to himself and is most jealous of letting his children into a knowledge of how he manages his money.  His children are like monks in a monastery as regards money and he calls this training them up with the strictest regard to principle.  Nevertheless he thinks himself ill-used if his son, on entering life, falls a victim to designing persons whose knowledge of how money is made and lost is greater than his own.