In a private and individualized conversation between the novice in life and the expert, it is possible to say many necessary things that could not be said in public, and it is possible, moreover, for the youth to ask questions which shyness and reserve make it impossible to put to parents, while the convenient opportunity of putting them naturally to the expert otherwise seldom or never occurs.

Most youths have their own special ignorances, their own special difficulties, difficulties and ignorances that could sometimes be resolved by a word.

Yet it by no means infrequently happens that they carry them far on into adult life because they have lacked the opportunity, or the skill and assurance to create the opportunity, of obtaining enlightenment.
It must be clearly understood that these talks are of medical, hygienic, and physiological character; they are not to be used for retailing moral platitudes.

To make them that would be a fatal mistake.

The young are often very hostile to merely conventional moral maxims, and suspect their hollowness, not always without reason.