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unpardonable--knowledge, the possession of which is essential for
their future welfare.

The first necessity for well-being is a healthy mind in a healthy
body. We can give our children that, if we will, by teaching them all
about the body, its source of life, its different functions, and its
care. The child should grow to maturity knowing that the human body
is something fine, something that accomplishes good, something to be
proud of in every way. Above all should the child be taught all
concerning the process of reproduction, just as it is taught the
action of the stomach or of the brain. By so doing, we can produce a
better and healthier and happier generation to follow ours. By what
strange and mistaken impulse in the past such absolutely required
teaching has been so studiously withheld is beyond all comprehension.

We want the best for our children. We want them to grow up with right
thoughts and habits, yet we keep from them the knowledge without which
their thoughts and habits will surely be imperiled when there arises
in them the generative instinct, which has its effect upon both male
and female youth alike.

We give them no information as to sexual matters; and, when it comes
to them, it is too often but in the way of half-truths, mysterious,
exciting to the imagination, and dangerous.

Yet how simple and natural the giving of this information might be
made; and how easily the child might be safeguarded! Mankind has
demands which must be gratified. We have hunger; we have thirst; we
have the impulse of reproduction. Each is right and natural. There
should be no difference in the consideration of either of these wants.
All about them the child should be taught, from the beginning, so that
all will be natural and right and commonplace and a matter of course
long before the age is reached when the sexual instinct is developed.

Is not this reason? Is it not healthful, logical, common sense? Is it
not the wholesome and right and proper view?

Nature is devoted to reproduction. From the cell to the flower, and so
on upward, the creatures of the world are but renewing themselves, and
the learning of this is the greatest and most beautiful of all
studies. All this the child can be taught.

Elementary biology, or the study of subjects of what we call zoology
and botany combined, can be made the most attractive of studies to any
child who has learned to read. The boy or girl may be taught that the
trees an