178 SEX 



The primary schools, too, are showing the 

 same tendency; while special schools of 

 nursing, of health and gymnastics, and above 

 all of child-care and mother-helping, are 

 increasingly commanding the respect and 

 attention of educationalists. 



Parallel to the admirable revolutionary 

 outbreak of boy-scouting, there is growing 

 up for girls a corresponding novitiate of 

 domesticity; and though the first be some- 

 times reproached as too primarily addressed 

 to the youthful hunter and savage in every 

 boy, and the latter as sometimes too much 

 tending to make a Cinderella of the girl these 

 are doubtless but transient limitations and 

 exaggerations, and may soon help each other 

 towards a more and more human complete- 

 ness. Each of these methods, even if still 

 somewhat crudely expressed, is a return to 

 nature, to human nature, to sex-nature ; and 

 not simply an escape from that dull over- 

 pressure of mere second-hand knowledge, 

 which has too long been the fetish and the 

 curse of schools, but a recovery of the real 

 first-hand knowledge, which, however simple, 

 readily grows to more. With boys made 

 more courageous, and girls more gentle, we 

 cannot surely but see our way to the next 

 step boys also more gentle, girls more 

 courageous too. Although we believe, and 

 would fain realise in education, that " virtue " 

 should become increasingly the same for both 

 sexes, it is well not to forget the differing 

 meanings of the old Latin word virtus as of 

 predominant courage and vigour, affection 

 and purity, for the sexes respectively. It is 



