difference from anatomical
subjects, the dignity of death being a noble prelude to the
knowledge of sex and depriving it forever of morbid prurience.
It is scarcely necessary to remark that this method of teaching
children the elements of sexual anatomy in the _post-mortem_ room
has not found many advocates or followers; it is undesirable, for
it fails to take into account the sensitiveness of children to
such impressions, and it is unnecessary, for it is just as easy
to teach the dignity of life as the dignity of death.

The duty of the school to impart education in matters of sex to
children has in recent years been vigorously and ably advocated
by Maria Lischnewska (op. cit.), who speaks with thirty years'
experience as a teacher and an intimate acquaintance with
children and their home life. She argues that among the mass of
the population to-day, while in the home-life there is every
opportunity for coarse familiarity with sexual matters, there is
no opportunity for a pure and enlightened introduction to them,
parents being for the most part both morally and intellectually
incapable of aiding their children here. That the school should
assume the leading part in this task is, she believes, in
accordance with the whole tendency of modern civilized life. She
would have the instruction graduated in such a manner that during
the fifth or sixth year of school life the pupil would receive
instruction, with the aid of diagrams, concerning the sexual
organs and functions of the higher mammals, the bull and cow
being selected by preference. The facts of gestation would of
course be included. When this stage was reached it would be easy
to pass on to the human species with the statement: "Just in the
same way as the calf develops in the cow so the child develops in
the mother's body."

It is difficult not to recognize the force of Maria Lischnewska's
argument, and it seems highly probable that, as she asserts, the
instruction proposed lies in the course of our present path of
progress. Such instruction would be formal, unemotional, and
impersonal; it would be given not as specific instruction in
matters of sex, but simply as a part of natural history. It would
supplement, so far as mere knowledge is concerned, the
information the child had already received from its mother. But