I turn at once to the date line at the end of the preface, and learn with astonishment that it reads, “New York City, June 1, 1925.” So New York parents are frowning--at least some of them are--when their girls skip the rope or play jackstones. Or were in 1925. What changes must recently have taken place, or how the newspapers of the world must have lied about New York! But anyway, this looks like a whole-souled endorsement of the more modern way of bringing up girls and a condemnation of the ultra-conservatism of New York--unless Dorsey was thinking of the girls of Thibet and forgot to mention it. He is still modern on page 439, where he says: “It is psychologically significant that children of both sexes are born with erogenous zones.... The sex-mechanism is inherently perfect at birth. The [interior] impulse for a mate appears later, at puberty. But the mechanism itself is so built into our structure that inaction is biologically abnormal. Yet we speak of ‘control’; and dose youth with endless formulæ.” Let us, then, cease to speak of control--at least long enough to enquire into the meaning of these Dorsey adjectives. Here we have “psychologically” significant, and “biologically” abnormal, with the adverb “inherently” attached to the word perfect. (I also note, on page 103, that, “biologically,” immortality is a figure of speech.) Does he mean that the erogenous zones are insignificant when viewed, say, from a social rather than a psychological standpoint? Does he mean to admit that their inaction is normal if we could once get away from whatever is implied by this ubiquitous biology of his? And who is to guess what is meant by a perfection which inheres in anything at birth? To inhere, I believe, means to be fixed or to exist in something else; to be an essential part of; to be innate. At least my dictionary says it does. Now what is a perfection which inheres in a just-born erogenous zone? Does it mean that the zone is born ready to perform all its functions? But this is contrary to notorious fact. Or is the zone born imperfect, and permitted to use its inherent perfection only later? But we have just been told that inaction is biologically abnormal. If any meaning is to be supposed to inhere in words, Dorsey must here be trying to tell us that between the time of birth and the time of puberty, the erogenous zones should not be subjected to the biologically abnormal condition of inactivity. And yet, on this same page, he continues: “What happens to the sex-response mechanism between birth and marriageable age? Biologically nothing; nothing is expected of it.” That is to say, biologically speaking, nothing is expected of the erogenous zones before puberty except that they shall endure the biologically abnormal condition of inaction. But perhaps “biologically nothing” means just nothing, and perhaps just nothing is the meaning of the whole passage. Let us hope so.