tell you, I said. When a given symbol which represents a
thought has lain for a certain length of time in the mind, it
undergoes a change like that which rest in a certain position gives to
iron. It becomes magnetic in its relations--it is traversed by strange
forces which did not belong to it. The word, and consequently the idea
it represents, is polarised.

"The religious currency of mankind, in thought, in speech, and in
print, consists entirely of polarised words. Borrow one of these from
another language and religion, and you will find it leaves all its
magnetism behind it. Take that famous word, O'm, of the Hindoo
mythology. Even a priest cannot pronounce it without sin; and a holy
Pundit would shut his ears and run away from you in horror, if you
should say it aloud. What do you care for O'm? If you wanted to get
the Pundit to look at his religion fairly, you must first depolarise
this and all similar words for him. The argument for and against new
translations of the Bible really turns on this. Scepticism is afraid
to trust its truths in depolarised words, and so cries out against a
new translation. I think, myself, if every idea our Book contains
could be shelled out of its old symbol and put into a new, clean,
unmagnetic word, we should have some chance of reading it as
philosophers, or wisdom-lovers, ought to read it--which we do not and
cannot now, any more than a Hindoo can read the 'Gayatri' as a fair
man and lover of truth should do."

* * * * *

Now in the minds of many boys and some girls certain words and ideas
connected with certain physiological processes become polarised. It is
the parents' duty to depolarise them. It is a task which cannot well
be deputed to others; nor can much help be derived from books, though
many have been written with the object of initiating children into the
mysteries of sex. No one but a parent is likely to be on sufficiently
intimate terms with the child to enable the subject to be approached
without restraint or awkwardness, and no book can adapt itself to the
varying needs of individual children. An exposition in cold print, or
a single formal lecture on the subject, is apt to do more harm than
good. I have seen instructions to parents to deliver themselves of set
speeches, examples of which are given, which seem to me well
calculated to repel and frighten the nervous child. Still more
dangerous is the advice to make sexual hygiene a s