THE WAY LIFE BEGINS 9 



or parent may feel that success has been achieved when a 

 child or adolescent looks upon the facts of reproduction, where- 

 ever they are found, as no less mysterious, wonderful, or 

 beautiful than other facts of life. If children gradually 

 acquire this mental attitude, they will be proof against the 

 brooding mystery, the soliciting and haunting curiosity with 

 which the subject of sex is now too frequently surrounded. 



Begin With a Few Plants and Animals 



Any common plant or animal whose life activities and 

 structures are understood, will furnish much of the needed 

 material for one's own study, and an object lesson for teach- 

 ing. Books may be consulted and used as helps, but they 

 will not take the place of observation and familiarity through 

 long-continued association with the living form. The beginner 

 might well confine his attention to one plant or animal until 

 he has at least learned the more common facts of its life 

 habits, environment, reproductive cycle, and its relations to 

 other organisms. The matured nature student will, of course, 

 be able to use any material that comes to hand, or to answer 

 satisfactorily any reasonable question that a child may ask. 



The study of a few typical plants or animals will not be 

 difficult. The good teacher will always compare the structures 

 and functions of diverse forms one with the other, so that 

 what has already been learned shall still further explain and 

 co-ordinate the new. In all such studies it will be found that 

 the same plan, the same structure, is endlessly repeated in 

 great groups of plants and animals. 



Nature Study Pays Good Dividends 



Nature-knowledge, even when acquired at some cost, pays 

 good dividends. Rightly directed, it disciplines the memory 

 and stimulates the reasoning powers. It humanizes and 

 tempers the brutalizing tendency in youth; it makes clear 

 the enduring relation of parents and young, and the racial 

 meaning of mother love. It gives the mind a glimpse of the 

 web of life, and furnishes a bulwark against superstition and 

 surmise. In matters of sex, it proves, to any reasoning mind, 



