170 SEX 



this in every possible way the type of 

 physical and intellectual life and education 

 normalising or denormalising the sex-life, 

 according as we manage it, and so conversely, 

 the sex-life ennobling or deteriorating the 

 whole general education in its turn. 



We have been considering how young people 

 may be educated in regard to the facts of sex ; 

 but we must now turn the problem round, and 

 inquire whether the facts of sex do not point 

 to the need for a re-consideration and re- 

 adjustment of our educational routines. 



In the adolescence of the organism, during 

 which in mankind, the voice of education is 

 clamant, we have already recognised a period 

 of rapid growth and redifferentiation. There 

 is increasing stability and yet, for the time, 

 great instability; there is great vigour, and 

 yet great " slackness " ; it is not a period of 

 the inclined plane of life, it is a period of 

 taking steps. This means that the adolescent 

 should have plenty of rest and plenty of 

 play and plenty of broad human interests. 

 But when such physiological ideas become 

 considered in high places, what will become of 

 some of our most cherished present school 

 and university arrangements their leaving 

 certificates, their entrance and scholarship 

 examinations, with their standards " working 

 up " as these are all so rapidly doing ? 



If this progress in "raising the standard" 

 be continued during the next generation in 

 anything like the same way it has gone up in 

 ours, we shall have practically a recrudescence 

 of the ancient memory contests of the Finns, 

 combined with the Egyptian Trial of the Dead. 



