SEX-EDUCATION 171 



Of course, without the poetry of the first, or 

 the religion of the second, but with a com- 

 bination of their respective toil and terror. 

 Indeed, do we not already inflict far too much 

 of this intellectual strain, this moral anxiety, 

 upon many a sensitive youth and on far too 

 many conscientious girls; and though we 

 justly shudder at the ancient ritual which 

 could pass a child through the fire to Moloch, 

 are we so much gentler or wiser in passing our 

 children wholesale through examinations for 

 Mammon? And though we have not as yet 

 materially flattened down our children's fore- 

 heads in deference to the established fashion 

 of certain old-fashioned tribes, do we not more 

 seriously deform them in both compressing 

 and depressing their growing brains ? 



As from the biological standpoint of this 

 volume, we support the woman's cause, and 

 the child's, so, perhaps above all, we plead for 

 the adolescent, both youth and maid; and 

 we claim a brief hearing from parents, from 

 teachers and examiners, both secondary and 

 higher, and from the authorities to whom 

 these parents and teachers alike have for two 

 or more generations been increasingly aban- 

 doning their responsibilities and powers. 



There are, indeed, increasing and hopeful 

 signs, even in the world of examination (as 

 notably for the Rhodes Scholarships and the 

 Navy), of the subordination of exclusive book 

 and memory tests to a fuller and more all- 

 round type of examination ; so why may not 

 " Estimation versus Examination " be made 

 the slogan of a needed general revolt ? Against 

 this, to do the said authorities justice, the 



