What is the psychological meaning of the combination of man and woman? It is the union between opposites, which, perhaps, I may try to explain further as the union between consciousness and unconsciousness. The man is essentially conscious, the woman essentially unconscious; the man is concentrated in his intellect, the woman is concentrated in her senses. These, at least, are the nearest words in which I am able to express it. And of one thing I am certain: the modern way of mixing the qualities of the two sexes acts directly for unhappiness and in harm to the race. I did not always think this: I did not want to think it. I have come slowly to be convinced and against my own will. And I am glad to take the opportunity now, as I near the end of my book on Motherhood—the subject which ever has been deepest in my heart—to state this as my later opinion, which has been made clear to me by the experiences of my life. There is no use in saying there is no difference between the girl and the boy when human nature keeps asserting that there is. There is even, as I have been forced into accepting, a natural tendency between boys and girls to draw away from each other. You may see this separation in every co-education school where the children, led by deeper instincts than we have understood, bring our wisdom to foolishness. They unconsciously feel that separation which we have been trying to pretend does not exist. Each sex, at the very dawn of the teens and before, is unfolding interests, tastes, plays and ambitions of its own. It would be interesting to follow this dissimilarity as far as it could lead us. Sometimes it would seem that we had got to the bottom—to what is common to the girl as to the boy; the qualities that both sexes share as human beings, where the ties of similarity seem to link their characters. But wait! deeper than this we must seek for the truth. Even in this likeness there is an all-pervading unlikeness. And it is just this: the differences, which cannot, I think, be expressed, but which do exist—differences in souls, in minds and in bodies—as well as a separation in the habits, the desires, and attitude to life, that makes for such harmony in the elemental depths. The influence of sex extends in mysterious ways that as yet we do not understand. And the variation between the girl and the boy is far greater, I believe, than has ever in modern times been recognised. The longer I live, and the more life teaches me, the more strongly I am convinced of this fact: you do not make the girl into the boy by ignoring her special functions; you do not lessen sexuality by pretending it is not there. From the start of puberty this difference between the girl and the boy should be faced; great is the harm that follows from our pretending it is not there. And the hurt suffered in my opinion, is almost always more serious to the girl than to the boy.