In making clear to the mind of youth the fact data which initiates and governs reproduction in animal and in human life, the ideal to be cultivated is continence, the refraining from all experimentation undertaken in a spirit of curiosity, until such time as a well-placed affection, sanctioned by the divine blessing, will justify a sane and normal exploitation of physical needs and urges in the matrimonial state. To this end hard bodily and mental work should be encouraged in the youth of both sexes. "Satan finds work for idle hands to do," has special application in this connection, and a chaste and continent youth is usually the forerunner of a happy and contented marriage. And incidentally, a happy marriage is the best guarantee that reproduction, the carrying on of the species, will be morally and physically a success. Here, too, the fact should be strongly stressed that prostitution cannot be justified on any moral grounds. It represents a deliberate ignoring of the rightful function of sex, and the perversion of the sane and natural laws of reproduction. It is in marriage, in the sane and normal activities of that unit of our whole social system--the family--that reproduction develops nature's basic principle of perpetuation in the highest and worthiest manner, in obedience to laws humane and divine. CHAPTER II THE TRANSITION FROM CELL TO HUMAN BEING In the functional processes alluded to in the preceding chapter, the male germ-cell and the female germ-cell unite in a practically equal division of substance. We say "practically" because the maternal and the paternal influences are not equally divided in the offspring. One or the other usually predominates. But, as a general rule, it may be said that in the development of the embryonal life the process of cell division proceeds in such a way that every germ of the child's future organism represents approximately one-half maternal and one-half paternal substance and energy. In this process lies the true secret of heredity. The inherited energies retain their full measure of power, and all their original quality in the growing and dividing chromosomes (the chromosome is one of the segments into which the chromoplasmic filaments of a cell-nucleus break up just before indirect division). On the other hand, the egg-substance of the female germ-cell, which is assimilated by the chromosomes, and which is turned into _their_ substance by the process of organic chemistry, loses its specific plastic vital energy completely. It is in the same way that food eaten by the adult has absolutely no effect on his qualitative organic structure. We may eat ever so many beef-steaks without acquiring any of the characteristics of an ox. And the germ-cell may devour any amount of egg-protoplasma without losing its original paternal energy. As a rule a child inherits as many qualities from its mother as from its father.