I had known erotic feelings, but they had not arisen from the sight of the naked body, but gradually blossomed from the union of our souls." And he draws the final moral that, if only for the sake of our children, we must learn to educate ourselves.
Forel (_Die Sexuelle Frage_, p.

140), speaking in entirely the same sense as Gerhard, remarks that prudery may be either caused or cured in children.

It may be caused by undue anxiety in covering their bodies and hiding from them the bodies of others.
It may be cured by making them realize that there is nothing in the body that is unnatural and that we need be ashamed of, and by encouraging bathing of the sexes in common.

He points out (p.
512) the advantages of allowing children to be acquainted with the adult forms which they will themselves some day assume, and condemns the conduct of those foolish persons who assume that children already possess the adult's erotic feelings about the body.

That is so far from being the case that children are frequently unable to distinguish the sex of other children apart from their clothes.
At the Mannheim Congress of the German Society for Combating Venereal Diseases, specially devoted to sexual hygiene, the speakers constantly referred to the necessity of promoting familiarity with the naked body.