PHYSIOLOGY OP THE SEXUAL LIFE.
HUMAN life is divisible physiologically into certain well defined stages, separable by tolerably clear lines of demarcation. In our march through life toward our graves, each normal individual, as long as the reproductive glands maintain the power of their physiological processes, has an inherent desire for the perpetuation of the species. This desire constitutes the sexual instinct.
In order to learn how to live rightly we must understand ourselves at each stage of the march, lest a deadly blight settle upon us from which we may not be able to escape, and lest we become "sin's fools", without the power of perpetuating healthy offspring.
Time crowds us on from one stage to another, and while we are yet acting children's parts, a mighty change, a new birth almost, ushers us into our most important decade, namely, that period between puberty and maturity.
The stages of human life may properly be described as seven in number, as follows:
1. Ten lunar, or nine calendar months within the womb, during which we are not "airbreathers".
2. Infancy, terminating at the time when all the first set of teeth have appeared, which is usually at the end of the second year. During this period the child normally suckles its mother.
3. Childhood, which terminates when the second dentition is completed, i.e., at seven or eight years of age.
4. The period of Boyhood or Girlhood, which terminates at puberty.
6. The period of Adolescence, i.e., between puberty and the full development of manhood or womanhood.
6. The period of mature Manhood or Womanhood, which lasts more or less indefinitely until
7. Old Age, which is the declining portion of life.
The fifth and sixth periods are characterized by an active sex life, with a formal distinction of gender, while the first, second, third, fourth and seventh periods are expressive of a passive existence which, to all intents and purposes, is neuter.
PUBERTY.
If we empirically divide life into epochs of ten years, the second decade is by far the most important in the formation of the mental, moral, and physical qualities, early in which period puberty, or the development of the reproductive powers, comes on. From this time on, until these functions wane, sexual desire is a physiological appetite, though it is not fully felt until sexual maturity, when adolescence has passed.
Puberty occurs a year or two later in the male than in the female. Climate, race, vigor of constitution, heredity and social conditions have a marked influence on the period of life at which the earliest active manifestations of sex appear. Thus it occurs earUer in warm countries and in the class of society which lives luxuriously than in cold countries and among the poorer classes.
In temperate climates a girl arrives at puberty at about the thirteenth, fourteenth, or fifteenth year; while in the frigid zones it is delayed until the seventeenth, eighteenth, or even twentieth year; and in the torrid zones it comes on as early as the twelfth or thirteenth year, and sometimes even as early as the eighth year Climate has, of course, the same influence on the precocity of boys as it has on that of girls