SEX-EDUCATION 179 



by accepting and starting from these differing 

 bases in sex and life different in the child- 

 hood of the race and of its individuals we 

 may thence best advance, and so make virtue, 

 in all its modern sense and its ethical values, 

 more common to both sexes : never indeed 

 identical, yet more and more subtly inter- 

 mingled, and towards higher and higher 

 flower. 



Yet let no one imagine that we would debar 

 the adolescent girl any more than the youth 

 from the university; nor propose for any an 

 adolescence of mere irresponsibility or idleness. 

 Our ideal is one of novitiate, and with fuller 

 and more varied opportunities and interests ; 

 and this on one side indeed of arts and graces, 

 refinements and pleasures of youth enriched 

 from nature and science,' poetry and literature, 

 music and dancing, yet also rich in oppor- 

 tunity of what valiant lad and generous girl 

 alike desire ay, and more deeply -oppor- 

 tunities of enduring hardness, of sharing the 

 realities of the world's labours. If there be 

 anything in the progress of civilisation and 

 are there not grounds for believing that we 

 are just entering upon a new uplift of civilisa- 

 tion from a too squalid and palaeotechnic 

 industrial age to a finer neotechnic one from 

 a civilisation that is too harshly determined 

 by steam, and mechanical industries, by 

 markets, wars and mammon, to a finer age 

 refounded on electricity and striving towards 

 finer industries and arts, hygiene and educa- 

 tion, nobler homes and cities above all ? If, 

 as is the present fact, the electric age, the 

 housing age, the civic age, a time of moral and 



