when asked his opinion of such enlightenment, protested--in a
spirit certainly common among the men of his time--that it was
unnecessary, because boys could learn everything from the streets
and the newspapers, while "as to young girls--no! I would teach
them none of the truths of physiology. I can only see
disadvantages in such a proceeding. These truths are ugly,
disillusioning, sure to shock, to frighten, to disgust the mind,
the nature, of a girl." It is as much as to say that there is no
need to supply sources of pure water when there are puddles in
the street that anyone can drink of. A contemporary of Daudet's,
who possessed a far finer spiritual insight, Coventry Patmore,
the poet, in the essay on "Ancient and Modern Ideas of Purity" in
his beautiful book, _Religio Poetæ_, had already finely protested
against that "disease of impurity" which comes of "our modern
undivine silences" for which Daudet pleaded. And Metchnikoff,
more recently, from the scientific side, speaking especially as
regards women, declares that knowledge is so indispensable for
moral conduct that "ignorance must be counted the most immoral of
acts" (_Essais Optimistes_, p. 420).

The distinguished Belgian novelist, Camille Lemonnier, in his
_L'Homme en Amour_, deals with the question of the sexual
education of the young by presenting the history of a young man,
brought up under the influence of the conventional and
hypocritical views which teach that nudity and sex are shameful
and disgusting things. In this way he passes by the opportunities
of innocent and natural love, to become hopelessly enslaved at
last to a sensual woman who treats him merely as the instrument
of her pleasure, the last of a long succession of lovers. The
book is a powerful plea for a sane, wholesome, and natural