Many women are blindly prejudiced on this question as, indeed, I myself once was. The reason of such mistake is plain. This breaking down or lessening of the differences between the two sexes may be, and is, possible. By means of education and the action of habit a child may be impressed with characteristics normally foreign to its sex, qualities and tendencies are thus developed which ordinarily appear only in a child of the opposite sex. I would refer the reader back to the early section of this book for examples, most curious and suggestive, of such complete transposition of the female and male characters.[103] Things are not quite so obviously plain in the human world, but they are not less fateful, less significant. We touch here the real weakness in the position of the modern girl: the profound distrust that she has of herself. I do not mean, of course, intellectually or as a worker, but a distrust of herself as Woman. I believe it results directly from educational influences. All our effort is directed to repress from the consciousness of the girl the realities of her own sexual nature; and what we do is to hinder her deepest instincts so that often they fail in finding a healthy expression. In our schools the educational system is founded on the needs of boys and not on the needs of girls. I regard this as a great crime. For one thing, the development of the girl is more obscure and difficult than the development of the boy; in her sex-life there are finer balances, which opens up the way to greater evils. There is every possibility of morbid disturbance from any mistakes in the training. The girl has more that she needs to learn to establish her health and sexual happiness than has the boy; the pubescent period lasts longer with her and is more unsettling; while the greatest difficulty of all, perhaps, arises from the fact that her conduct is more ruled by deep unconscious instincts. Every girl lives a hidden life of her own, and it is within this shrine of her individuality that the primitive and fierce instincts of her sex struggle to find expression; and though always unacknowledged and often, indeed, unrecognised, alike by the girl herself as well as by her elders, it is these instincts that direct her growth and are the determining influence of her life, far more important than the actions directed by her conscious self, which is occupied in learning lessons, in play, and all the outward interests of the daily life. And it is this deeper ego that suffers from our educational system and the elaborate ingenuity with which the facts of life are hidden and glossed over. Girls in our schools, and also in our homes, are trained to become secretive about themselves, treating their special sexual functions as a mystery and a shame. Truth-telling is inculcated in all matters except sex, and here there is an unceasing evasion, which prepares disharmonies at the very dawn of sexual consciousness.