It should be remembered that in children the activity of the intelligence begins to work at an early age. Curiosity is very prominent: all children want “to find out.” And their activity will certainly tend to manifest itself in an inquisitive desire to know many elementary facts of life, which are dependent upon sex. The primary and most universal of these desires is the wish to know where babies come from. The degree of curiosity differs, of course, in different children; I do not think it is absent from any normal child. If they do not question their elders, they certainly will talk with one another. And the shy child, or the child who is kept from other companions, is not saved from these curiosities: I am inclined to think that the interest is strengthened and made more dangerous by repression. Many foolish stories are told by mothers, in their blindness and lack of faith, to put off the child’s natural desire to learn its origin. There is a curious illusion that children accept these fables, and really believe that the baby is found in the garden under the gooseberry tree, or brought by the stork, or by the doctor in his bag. But the child’s perception is more acute than is believed, and very rarely is any one deceived. And the mother forgets that by puzzling the child’s mind with these foolish stories she defeats very surely the object for which they are invented. The greater the mystery about sex matters the more will childish curiosity be aroused. We cannot escape from this. _The child thinks much less of what it knows and is sure of than of what it does not know, but wants to find out._ And the same objection, of stimulating instead of quieting curiosity, applies to the plan adopted by many parents of telling the child when it asks these questions that it is too young to understand and must wait until it is older. This postponement is better than inventing foolish fables and telling lies, but I am sure it is unwise. The mother thinks the child is satisfied and forgets. Very rarely is this the case; the child puzzles alone, its curiosity only quickened by the hurt that has been given to its sensitive young intelligence. A wide experience has taught me that the only children who do not talk or think much about the origin of babies are the children who know how babies are born. The silly stories told by parents are supplemented by equally absurd and often seriously injurious conversations with other children. Many servants of both sexes are addicted to idle and irreverent, even if not vicious, talk upon this subject, and by this means the views of many children, and even their whole future outlook, upon sex are distorted and besmirched. This is particularly the case with boys, where any intimacy with servants is much more dangerous than a similar intimacy in the case of girls.