type and embodiment of law; and it may be confidently
affirmed that, in spite of the blundering of many generations, there
is nothing in a normally-constituted child's mind which refuses to
take in the subject from this point of view, provided that the right
presentation of it is the first."

Nothing more forcibly convicts the present system of the evil which
lies at its door than the current beliefs on this subject. At present,
sexual knowledge is picked up from the gutter and the cesspool; and no
purification can free it entirely in many minds from its original
uncleanness.

"Love's a virtue for heroes!--as white as the snow on high hills,
And immortal as every great soul is that struggles, endures,
and fulfils."

This is the prophet's belief, and yet, putting on one side those who
actually delight in uncleanness, there appear to be many people who
look upon the marriage certificate as a licence to impurity, and upon
sexual union as a form of animal indulgence to which we are so
strongly impelled that even the most refined are tempted by it into an
act of conscious indelicacy and sin. Such people read literally the
psalmist's words: "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my
mother conceive me." It is surely some such feeling as this which
makes parents shrink from referring to the subject, which underlies
the constant use of the word "innocence" as the aptest description of
a state of mind which precedes the acquisition of sexual knowledge.

That individuals, at least, have risen to a loftier conception than
this is certain; and the only possible explanations of the prevalence
of the current idea are that sex-knowledge has almost always been
obtained from a tainted source; and that, while the coarse have not
merely whispered their views in the ear in the closet, but have, in
all ages, proclaimed them from the house-tops, the refined have hardly
whispered their ideas, much less discussed them publicly. Children
growing up with perverted views have listened to the loud assertions
of disputants on the one side, have witnessed the demoralisation which
so often attends the sexual passion, but have received no hint of what
may be said on the other side of the question.

An instructed public opinion would be horrified at our sovereign's
taking shares in a slave-trading expedition as Queen Elizabeth did. We
are aghast at the days when crowds went forth to enjoy the torture at
the stake of