Besides, it is the accepted way of intelligent children to be inquisitive: it is their birthright to ask us any amount of questions. A child who never asks a question about sex is indeed, so far as that goes, a backward child: what we call unobservant. In some ways, this non-questioning mind is good for young children; but surely it is unnatural that the children should attain to adolescence and still be ignorant of what they are. Whether these incurious children tend to be passionless in early adult life, I do not know; nor can I make any guess as to the proportion, in adolescence, of temperaments devoid of passion. Only, if they who are incurious during childhood do tend to be passionless in later years, that is no reason why we should admire them as children. For, in the design of our nature, and in the fabric of our nature, there is a place, and a very honourable place, for passion held under control. And they who have nothing to control are to be congratulated, because they are out of the way of temptation; but we admire, even more, those who are in the way of temptation and withstand it. If this be true, or anywhere near true, that a measure of inquisitiveness in childhood, and a measure of passion in early adult life, are welcome signs of a sane mind in a sane body, such as Juvenal bids us pray for, then it follows that we ought to give careful regard to these inquisitive children, and wise and honest answers to their embarrassing questions. But we grown-up folk are not agreed, nor ever shall be, what to tell them, and when to tell it. We have no set method of talking to children about sex, nor of warning older boys and girls against the miseries into which it may, if they let it, bring them. Of course, this want of agreement is not altogether our fault; we are so divided, because the children are so diverse. Their differences of temperament are reflected in our different ways of dealing with them. The fact remains, that we have no common plan, no authorised programme: and, if ever we do invent one, which we never shall, it will not suit all the children. Each of us, in this perplexity, judges for himself or herself; there is nothing else to be done.