cultivated, the refined, the virtuous--have nothing to do with sexual vice; that they must remain ignorant of facts, and see nothing but what it is pleasant to see. It is on this class of women, perhaps, more than on any other one class of society that its future welfare depends.[39] They are capable of broad views of truth, of insight, of ceaseless devotion to the highest welfare of the race, to God, when once they have learned to know what truth is; when they have realized the actual facts of every-day life and observed the effects of prevalent customs upon women as well as upon men. The task of regenerating society by securing the healthy growth of the faculty of sex in their children being, therefore, laid upon both parents, the indispensable co-operation of the mother in this work is seen more clearly, as the causes of sexual precocity and the triumph of the material nature over love are studied more deeply. The fact being established that the human being is not designed by Providence to be the slave of passion, what are the causes which produce that disease of licentiousness--as truly disease as drunkenness or opium-eating--which we find to be more completely organized and more audaciously justifying itself than at any previous time, the dangerous peculiarity of the present age being that customs and habits, formerly blindly followed, are now defended or legalized? We shall find, on considering the influence at work on the human being from childhood upward (laying aside for the moment the question of heredity), obvious sources of corruption that help us to the solution of this difficult problem. ‘The temptations of life’ to which our youth succumb are no fixed things essential to human nature. They vary in every age and country. They are changeable facts, removable evils, perversions of natural tastes. The human race can grow out of license into order, out of prostitution into marriage, out of lust into love, as certainly as typhoid fever can be exterminated by pure water and pure air. It is from childhood that the strong man is moulded gradually into the hero--or the criminal. If the superior standard of morality which is still to be found amongst us, be compared with the customs widely diffused in many other countries, it will be seen how variable the standard of morality is, and how dependent it is on social circumstance--_i.e._, on removable conditions.[40] These corrupting circumstances of life surround the individual at every stage of growth from youth onwards. They are found in early habits and influences; in mischievous school companions and studies; in vile literature, books, advertisements, pictures; in indecent theatre, ballet, public amusements; in opportunity and temptation; in drink and dissipated companions; in perverted social sentiment, false medical advice, delayed or unhappy marriage--these are the snares which meet the human being, and which may gradually pervert the nature. Now, there is not