But we cannot expect the adolescent girl to be content even with Ruskin and Wordsworth. She must, of course, have fiction, and under this heading there is more or less accessible to her every possibility in the gamut of morality, from the teaching of such a book as "Richard Feverel" down to the excrement and sewage that defile the railway book-stalls to-day under the guise of "bold, reverent, and fearless handling of the great sex problems." The present writer is one of those old-fashioned enough to believe that it matters a great deal what young people read. We are all hygienists nowadays, and very particular as to what enters our children's mouths. But what is the value of these precautions if we relax our care as to what enters their minds? It is my misfortune to be scarcely acquainted at all with fiction, and I can presume to offer no detailed guidance in this matter. The name of Mr. Eden Phillpotts must certainly be mentioned as foremost among those living writers who care for these things. In the Eugenics Education Society it was at one time hoped to see the formation of a branch of fiction in the library which might form the nucleus of a catalogue, well worth disseminating if only it could be compiled, of fiction worthy the consumption of girlhood. Perhaps it would hardly be necessary for the present writer to protest that the didactic, the unnaturally good, the well-meaning, the entirely amateur types of fiction, including those which ignore the facts of human nature, and, above all, those which decry instead of seeking to deify the natural, would find no place in this catalogue. It is possible, though I much doubt it, that there may be many books unknown to me of the order and quality of "Richard Feverel." At any rate, that represents in its perfection--save, perhaps, for the unnecessary tragedy of its close, which the illustrious author himself in conversation did not find it quite possible to defend--the type of novel whose teaching the Eugenist and the Maternalist must recommend for the nourishment of youth of both sexes. As has been already hinted, discourses on how to wash a baby are less in place here; and in the following chapter the argument will be set forth in detail that the sequence of the common schemes for the education of girlhood and womanhood is, in one essential respect, logically and practically erroneous. XIII CHOOSING THE FATHERS OF THE FUTURE We live in a social chaos of which the evolution into anything like a cosmos is scarcely more than incipient. In such a case the reformer has to do the best he may; in the only possible sense in which that phrase can be defended, he has to take the world as he finds it. Heartless heads will of course be found to comment upon the logical error of his ways, to which his only reply is that, while they stand and comment, what can be done he now will do.