The Middle Ages

     "Thanks to this one fact I have just related, out of thousands of other observations of mine, I think you will clearly understand that this monstrous phenomenon could not exist among the rising generation there if the notion were not prevalent that it is exceedingly 'indecent' to talk to children about the 'question of sex.'

     "This notion of 'decency' has come down to contemporary civilization as a heritage from the beings of the epoch called the 'MiddleAges.'

     "These candidates for ghassnamoosses of the Middle Ages, who were the chief destroyers of the real meaning of the teaching of the divine teacher, Jesus Christ, also devised and introduced, as a rule of everyday existence, the invention called 'bon ton.'  And this maleficent invention became so strongly rooted in the psyche of the majority from generation to generation that now your favorites, who have become completely weak-willed, are unable, even by conscious intention, to give up this abnormal psychic fixation, that is, the notion that it is indecent to talk to their children about the 'question of sex.'

Excerpt taken from Beelzebub's Tales to His Grandson, G. I. Gurdjieff, pub. Viking Arkana 1992,, p 418.