FOERSTKK. AND N KtiLKCTllD FACTORS J N EDUCATION. 239 



Vom ^ladchen reisst sich stolz der Knabe, 

 says Schiller ; that utterance has not lost its force in our time. 

 A modest reticence in speech, a modest retirement into the inner 

 self, will bear fruit in later life. The gradual removal of all land- 

 marks, the delimitation of established borders, leads to disastrous 

 results. 



Our sex problem is a pressing one. Is the school and college 

 to bear a hand in solving that problem ? W'e have revolutionized 

 our system of Higher Education. W'e are to have three Univer- 

 sities, compared b}- a highly-placed official to " the three pink pills 

 for pale people." But the problem which to my mind lies at the 

 back of every other educational question is that of sex. 



Let it be remembered that the modern child breathes in a 

 different atmosphere from that of his forefathers. Nothing is 

 fixed and stable in our day : reverence for authority is practical!}' 

 gone ; everything is submitted to criticism ; self-restraint is under- 

 mined ; appreciation of what is highest, purest, holiest, seems to 

 vanish. ( )ur magazines, periodicals, bioscopes, display pictures, 

 represent scenes which would have made our mothers blush. The 

 night side of life and thought is the theme of many a novel — not 

 the light side, or the right side. Sex problems are freely dis- 

 cussed in print, and form the theme of discussion in the play- 

 ground. The purest soul is contaminated by breathing in an 

 atmosphere radically impure. The training in what is evil and 

 immoral goes on without restraint outside the school room. Those 

 who have investigated the matter are appalled at the results. The 

 age of puberty is most critical in the life of our youth, the time 

 when, 



Standing with reluctant feet, 



Where the brook and river meet, 



Womanliood and childhood tleet — 



the age between ii, and 15, the most formative age in a boy's or 

 a girl's life, characteristically described by Stanley Hall in his 

 Adolescence." New wants arise and new desires, the senses are 

 keenly active, and the imagination is apt to run riot in what is 

 sensual. In many cases sexual passion sweeps the youth along in 

 a path which ends in degradation, demoralization, disease. The 

 percentage is high of those who fall a victim to sexual temptation. 

 Bavinck, in a work which lias recently appeared, maintains that, 

 according to some doctors, 95 to 98, according to others, 75 to 80 

 per cent, of boys, and 25 to 30 per cent, of girls, fall a victim to 

 sexual evil in some form or other. On the handling of this ques- 

 tion Foerster gives lielpful advice. I cannot enlarge on this very 

 delicate problem. I have stated it without entering into unneces- 

 sary particulars. 



Lessons in hygiene and physiology wisely taught and 

 applied, individual guidance, all these are helpful. But as Foerster 

 says : — 



Unfortunately of late a highly dangerous dilettantism has made itself 

 master of this problem. The hard intellectualism of a former century 

 fotmd the chief remedy in imparting information, as though the real cause 



