n would be noted (but who
would expect a mother to note that she laced tight up to such and such a
month? Perhaps the keeping of a log like this might act as a deterrent).
Similarly, under diet and regimen, year by year, the assumption of
breast-feeding--provision of columns for the various incidents of
it--weight before and after feeding, etc., would have a great suggestive
value.

"The provision under diet and regimen of columns for 'drug habits, if
any'--tea, coffee, alcohol, nicotine, morphia, etc.--would have a
suggestive value and operate in the direction of the simple life and a
reverence for the body. Some good aphorisms might be strewed in, such
as:

"'If anything is sacred, the human body is sacred' (Whitman).

"As young people circulate their 'Books of Likes and Dislikes,' etc.,
and thus in an entertaining way provide each other with insight into
mutual character, so the Life-History need not be an _arcanum_--at least
where people have nothing to be ashamed of. It would be a very trying
ordeal, no doubt, to admit even intimate friends to this confidence.
_But as eugenics spread, concealment of taint will become almost
impracticable_, and the facts may as well be confessed. But even then
there will be limitations. There might be an esoteric book for the
individual's own account of himself. Such important items as the
incidence of puberty (though notorious in some communities) could not
well be included in a book open even to the family circle, for
generations to come. The quiescence of the genital sense, the sedatives
naturally occurring, important as these are, and occupying the
consciousness in so large a degree, would find no place; nevertheless, a
private journal of the facts would help to steady the individual, and
prove a check against disrespect to his body.

"As the facts of individual evolution would be noted, so likewise would
those of dissolution. The first signs of decay--the teeth, the
elasticity of body and mind--would provide a valuable sphere for all who
are disposed to the diary-habit. The journals of individuals with a gift
for introspection would furnish valuable material for psychologists in
the future. Life would be cleansed in many ways. Journals would not have
to be bowdlerized, like Marie Bashkirtseff's, for the morbidity that
gloats on the forbidden would have a lesser scope, much that is now
regarded as disgraceful being then accepted as natural and right.

"The book might have