B1034 <=> B1036 (BTG XLII Beelzebub in America, p. 1035)

“This foster child of mine, who had chanced to become my enlightener upon the subtleties of the psyche of the beings of the female sex of your planet, further explained to me that every pupil of the institute who was a member of the men’s club could choose for herself as many partners as she wished for the common pastime; this of course proceeding in full accordance with the teachings of the poetess Sappho.

“I think that thanks merely to this one fact which I have related to you out of thousands of other observations of mine, you can already clearly picture to yourself that such a phenomenal ugliness could not exist among the rising generation if the notion was not prevalent there that it is exceedingly ‘indecent’ to talk to children about the ‘sex question.’

“This notion of ‘decency’ came down to contemporary civilization by inheritance from the beings of the epoch called the ‘Middle Ages.’

“These candidates for Hasnamusses of the Middle Ages, having been among the chief agents in the destruction of the real meaning of the teaching of the Divine Teacher Jesus Christ, then also devised and introduced into everyday existence, as a regulation, the maleficent invention which they called ‘bon ton.’ And this maleficent invention then became so strongly fixed in the psyche of the majority that it became organized for them and began to pass by heredity from generation to generation, so that now your contemporary favorites, who have become completely weak-willed, are unable, however they may try, to overcome such an abnormal psychic fixation as, in the given case, the notion of the indelicacy of talking to their children about the ‘sex question.’