If it was done well, it only remains to exercise faith and trust. If it
was done ill, nothing done later will compensate, for it is merely foolish
for a mother who could not educate her children when they were small to
imagine that she is able to educate them when they are big.

So it is that the problem of the attitude of the child to its parents
circles round again to that of the parents to the child. The wise parent
realises that childhood is simply a preparation for the free activities of
later life, that the parents exist in order to equip children for life and
not to shelter and protect them from the world into which they must be
cast. Education, whatever else it should or should not be, must be an
inoculation against the poisons of life and an adequate equipment in
knowledge and skill for meeting the chances of life. Beyond that, and no
doubt in the largest part, it is a natural growth and takes place of
itself.




CHAPTER II

THE MEANING OF PURITY

I


We live in a world in which, as we nowadays begin to realise, we find two
antagonistic streams of traditional platitude concerning the question of
sexual purity, both flowing from the far past.