bad features. _Senex_, the old man, often says to younger people, "These
things you pursue are valueless--I too have sought them, later abandoned
the search and now see my folly;" not realizing that if his blood were
to resume its former chemical character he would return to the quest.

Elderly people, then, biological neuters, come especially within the
problem of the economical use of the social as distinguished from the
biological capacities of the race. They affect the sex problem proper,
which applies to a younger age-class, only through their opinions. Some
of these opinions are hangovers from the time in their own lives when
they had stronger sexual interests, and some are peculiar to people of
their readjusted glandular activity. Their reproductive contribution to
society has been made.

Pre-pubertal childhood and youth, on the contrary, has its biological
contributions to society still before it. The glandular activity of boys
and girls is perhaps not so unlike as to justify society in giving them
a different kind of education and preparation for group life. The excuse
for two sorts of training is that the two sexes will not do the same
work after puberty. Hence the question of youthful training is
sociological almost entirely--not biological--or rather, it rests upon
the biology, not of childhood but of the reproductive period, which
society anticipates.

Instead of scattering attention over the whole history of the universe,
then, or even over the general field of biology, in dealing with sex as
a social problem, the emphasis must be upon the human life cycle during
the functional-reproductive period. Other biological data than that
which concerns this period is merely introductory or explanatory. The
extent to which the sociological problem involved is linked up with