8 THE WAY LIFE BEGINS 



need be no fear that a force which is so enormous and all- 

 inclusive is therefore necessarily baneful. Those who are 

 firmly convinced that sex is evil or degraded will either not 

 tolerate any study of nature, or will accept only an emascu- 

 lated form from which all direct reference to sex is eliminated. 

 Our nature books, almost without exception, fulfil this last 

 requirement; they provide most elaborate studies of animal 

 life without reference to one of the chief objects for which 

 animals live. Since there are so many studies of this kind 

 available, the following stories of the lily, the moth, the fish, 

 the frog, the chick, the rabbit, and the child, emphasize espe- 

 cially the reproductive side of their lives, with the hope, how- 

 ever, that this information will be fully related, by those who 

 use it, to the rest of the structure and activities of these living 

 forms. 



Unpreparedness of Parents and Teachers 



City bred children do not have the opportunities afforded 

 the country child for observation of animals; therefore it is 

 most important that information concerning reproduction 

 be given them. This is, however, a form of biological infor- 

 mation which parents and teachers are often least able to 

 give. Their unpreparedness for this task is due, not so much 

 to the unnatural embarrassment which is sometimes made to 

 surround the subject, or to a deliberate attempt to preserve 

 ignorance in the interest of virtue, as it is a need of the nec- 

 essary information. When one is unacquainted with the 

 ordinary daily habits of plants and animals and their internal 

 structure, it is not easy to form a clear idea of their very 

 intricate processes of reproduction. The best preparation 

 for understanding these processes, and, therefore, the ability 

 to explain them to others, is to obtain a mastery of the life- 

 history of some one plant or animal. 



When plants and animals are studied in this earnest way, 

 with a frank desire to know as much as possible about them, 

 there is no occasion for embarrassment or reticence on the part 

 of teacher or pupil, parent or child, when dealing with their 

 sex habits or the structure of the sex organs. The teacher 



