The child so instructed is not supplied with all necessary facts, and instruction of a more specific and exact nature will have to be repeated at further intervals throughout its life, but on this foundation, further knowledge can be built without having to wipe out anything already implanted, without having to contradict earlier instruction, or to acknowledge the gravest error of having lied. Life teaches much to a quick child trained to observation, particularly in the country, where all children should spend much of their time. If the little one has been told what has been given in the previous pages it will have all the essential truths on to which it will fit in for itself the other data which daily life will bring it; thus it may garner a harvest of facts one by one. Concerning the later instruction which will be necessary, the information can be given in many ways. Some advocate school instruction of children of twelve or more in the physiology of all the members of the body, so that the racial powers are treated in their proper place in conjunction with the digestive organs, brain, lungs, etc. Some parents prefer to give the instruction themselves, for none but they can know so well the individual needs of the child. Much has already been written and is available in the voluminous literature about the presentation of the facts to be imparted at the various later ages, and almost every book advises comparisons with flowers. For the later ages of ten years and after, this is probably the best introduction for specific details, but for the first and earliest instruction of the baby mind, such direct simple answers as I have indicated are, I am sure, the best. Children whose parents have treated them as I advise in this chapter are _essentially safe_ whatever form later instruction may take. They will then have the vitality to survive lies, although ever to lie to them will be putting a cruel and useless strain on their recuperative powers. If the little child is started upon its life with a beautiful and true conception of its relation to its mother, and of man’s relation to woman, it will be unlikely indeed that it will grow up a hooligan who flouts his parents or a loose and lascivious destroyer of women. CHAPTER XIX The Cost of Coffins He only is free who can control himself. EPICTETUS. The imposition of motherhood upon a married woman in absolute despite of her health and of the interests of the children is none the less an iniquity because it has at present the approval of Church and State. SALEEBY: _Woman and Womanhood_. Why do poor slum mothers buy more coffins than do the same number of rich women?