of the sexes; next, mistaken, or no instruction whatever, in
matters that concern the human being as a sexual entity. True enough,
natural history is taught in every tolerably good school. The child
learns that birds lay eggs and hatch them out: he also learns when the
mating season begins: that males and females are needed: that both
jointly assume the building of the nests, the hatching and the care of
the young. He also learns that mammals bring forth live young: he learns
about the rutting season and about the fights of the males for the
females during the same: he learns the usual number of young, perhaps
also the period of pregnancy. But on the subject of the origin and
development of his own stock he remains in the dark; that is veiled in
mystery. When, thereupon, the child seeks to satisfy his natural
curiosity with questions addressed to his parents, to his mother in
particular--he seldom ventures with them to his teacher--he is saddled
with the silliest stories that cannot satisfy him, and that are all the
more injurious when he some day does ascertain the truth. There are
probably few children who have not made the discovery by the twelfth
year of their age. In all small towns, in the country especially,
children observe from earliest years the mating of birds, the copulation
of domestic animals; they see this in closest proximity, in the yard, on
the street, and when the cattle are turned loose. They see that the
conditions under which the heat of the cattle is gratified, as well as
the act of birth of the several domestic animals are made the subject of
serious, thorough and undisguised discussion on the part of their
parents, elder brothers and servants. All that awakens doubts in the
child's mind on the accounts given him of his own entry into life.
Finally the day of knowledge does come; but it comes in a way other than
it would have come under a natural and rational education. The secret
that the child discovers leads to estrangement between child and
parents, particularly between child and mother. The reverse is obtained
of that which was aimed at in folly and shortsightedness. He who
recalls his own youth and that of his young companions knows what the
results frequently are.

An American woman says, among other things in a work written by her,
that wishing to answer the repeated questions of her eight-year-old son
on his origin, and unwilling to saddle him with nursery tales, she
disclosed the truth