led to highly important results, and I would
not disparage science for its own sake. It has its uses. Nevertheless
I personally have no use for it. To me everything must have a direct
human purpose, a definite human application. When the cup of human
life is so overflowing with woe and pain and misery, it seems to me a
narrow dilettanteism or downright charlatanism to devote one's self to
petty or bizarre problems which can have no relation to human
happiness, and to prate of self-satisfaction and self-expression. One
can have all the self-expression one wants while doing useful work.

And working for humanity does not exclude a healthy hedonism; not the
narrow Cyrenaic, but an enlightened altruistic hedonism. And in
writing this book I have kept the human problem constantly before my
eyes. It was not my ambition merely to impart interesting facts: my
concern was the practical application of these facts, their relation
to human happiness.

If this book should be instrumental, as I confidently trust it will,
in destroying some medieval superstitions, in dissipating some
hampering and cramping errors, in instilling some hope in the hearts
of the hopeless, in bringing a little joy into the homes of the
joyless, in increasing in however slight a degree the sum total of
human happiness, its mission shall have been gloriously fulfilled.

For this is the mission of the book: to increase the sum total of
human happiness.

W.J.R.

12 Mount Morris Park W.,
New York City.
Jan. 1, 1917.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. THE PARAMOUNT NEED OF SEX KNOWLEDGE FOR GIRLS AND WOMEN 23

Why Sex Knowledge is of Paramount Importance to Girls and
Women--Reasons Why a Misstep in a Girl Has More Serious
Consequences than a Misstep in a Boy--The Place Love
Occupies in Woman's Life--Woman's Physical Disabilities.

II. THE FEMALE SEX ORGANS; THEIR ANATOMY 31

The Internal Sex Organs--The Ovaries--The Fallopian Tubes--The
Uterus--The Divisions of the Uterus--Anteversion,
Anteflexion, Retroversion, Retroflexion, of the
Uterus--Endometritis--The Vagina--The Hymen--Imperforate
Hymen--The External Genitals--The Vulva, Labia Majora, Labia
Minora, the Mons Veneris, the Clitoris, the Urethra--The
Breasts--The Pelvis--The Difference Between the Male