Now, to some parents and teachers, not understanding the results, it may seem that this is an end to be desired, and that such a postponement of the sex-life to the years when the girl is older will be a safeguard against evils. This, I believe, is a mistake. The sex feelings are not absent but hidden, and the result too often is a profound melancholy and a dull heaviness which may continue to spoil life. And when the time comes, as come it must, and the long-repressed feelings force an expression, the sex-strain is often very great, and troubles frequently arise that could not have happened except for our interference with the right process of nature. Of course, whatever we do, we must expect often to fail. We are not dealing with anything that can be fixed; and our methods as well as our success must vary with each individual girl. It is this personal element that has not been considered. And this is why there is such need for a higher and different standard in our schools, and of more knowledge and understanding on the part of all who are connected with the training of girls. I know of nothing that can prepare the girl but the early teaching of the mother, but I think in the later adolescent years it is the wise teacher who can better carry on the work. The task of the educator ought to be plain: to encourage all girls in their natural reaching out for experience and knowledge of themselves, not to smother all that is individual in them under set lessons, necessary perhaps and helpful at other periods of growth, but now I am certain harmful, dulling the character with falsehood and the bodies with constraints, and wearying the minds with overstrain through long hours of drudgery into a dull acceptance. The worst influence of the school is its isolation from life. Consciousness, not instruction, should be the aim of education. Yet in all directions our girls have been led and forced into following material consciousness, and, at the same time, they have increasingly lost consciousness of themselves. Realisation of one’s own being—how to produce this by means of education—that is the question. What answer are we going to give? Such a rest period in specially adapted schools as I am here advocating would serve not only to establish the health of adolescent girls and fit them for vigorous womanhood, it would, as I believe, change their ideal and remake life. In such surroundings fitted to their own needs, and with a different valuation of the future set before them, they would have a truer sense of self-consciousness; they would come to understand in quite a new way the responsibilities and high glory of being women.