for which Daudet pleaded.  And Metchnikoff, more recently, from the scientific side, speaking especially as regards women, declares that knowledge is so indispensable for moral conduct that “ignorance must be counted the most immoral of acts” (Essais Optimistes, p. 420).

The distinguished Belgian novelist, Camille Lemonnier, in his L’Homme en Amour, deals with the question of the sexual education of the young by presenting the history of a young man, brought up under the influence of the conventional and hypocritical views which teach that nudity and sex are shameful and disgusting things.  In this way he passes by the opportunities of innocent and natural love, to become hopelessly enslaved at last to a sensual woman who treats him merely as the instrument of her pleasure, the last of a long succession of lovers.  The book is a powerful plea for a sane, wholesome, and natural education in matters of sex.  It was, however, prosecuted at Bruges, in 1901, though the trial finally ended in acquittal.  Such a verdict is in harmony with the general tendency of feeling at the present time.

The old ideas, expressed by Daudet, that the facts of sex are ugly and disillusioning, and that they shock the mind of the young, are both alike entirely false.  As Canon Lyttelton remarks, in urging that the laws of the transmission of life should be taught to children by the mother:  “The way they receive it with native reverence, truthfulness of understanding and guileless delicacy, is nothing short of a revelation of the never-ceasing beauty of nature.  People sometimes speak of the indescribable beauty of children’s innocence.  But I venture to say that no one quite knows what it is who has foregone the privilege of being the first to set before them the true meaning of life and birth and the mystery of their own being.  Not only do we fail to build up sound knowledge in them, but we put away from ourselves the chance of learning something that must be divine.”  In the same way, Edward Carpenter, stating that it is easy and natural for the child to learn from the first its physical relation to its mother, remarks (Love’s Coming of Age, p. 9):  “A child at the age of puberty, with the unfolding of its far-down emotional and sexual nature, is eminently capable of the most sensitive, affectional and serene appreciation of what sex means (generally more so as things are to-day, than its worldling parent or guardian); and can absorb the teaching, if sympathetically given, without any shock or disturbance to its sense of shame—­that sense which is so natural and valuable a safeguard of early youth.”

How widespread, even some years ago, had become the conviction that the sexual facts of life should be taught to girls as well as boys, was shown when the opinions of a very miscellaneous assortment of more or less prominent persons were sought on the question ("The Tree of Knowledge,”