There is, first, that large proportion of infant mortality which is due to maternal ignorance, as we shall see in a subsequent chapter. At present we may briefly remind ourselves that the nation has had the young mother at school for many years; much devotion and money have been spent upon her. Yet it is necessary to pass an Act insuring, if possible, that when she is confronted with the great business of her life--which is the care of a baby--within thirty-six hours the fact shall be made known to some one who, racing for life against time, may haply reach her soon enough to remedy the ignorance which would otherwise very likely bury her baby. Prudery has decreed that while at school she should learn nothing of such matters. For the matter of that she may even have attended a three-year course in science or technology, and be a miracle of information on the keeping of accounts, the testing of drains, and the principles of child psychology, but it has not been thought suitable to discuss with her the care of a baby. How could any nice-minded teacher care to put such ideas into a girl's head? Never having noticed a child with a doll, we have somehow failed to realize that Nature, her Ancient Mother and ours, is not above putting into her head, when she can scarcely toddle, the ideas at which we pretend to blush. Prudery on this topic, and with such consequences, is not much less than blasphemy against life and the most splendid purposes towards which the individual, "but a wave of the wild sea," can be consecrated. This question of the care of babies offers us much less excuse for its neglect than do questions concerned with the circumstances antecedent to the babies' appearance. Yet we are blameworthy, and disastrously so, here also. Prudery here insists that boys and girls shall be left to learn anyhow. That is not what it says, but that is what it does. It feebly supposes not merely that ignorance and innocence are identical, but that, failing the parent, the doctor, the teacher, and the clergyman--and probably all these do fail--ignorance will remain ignorant. There are others, however, who always lie in wait, whether by word of mouth or the printed word, and since youth will in any case learn--except in the case of a few rare and pure souls--we have to ask ourselves whether we prefer that these matters shall be associated in its mind with the cad round the corner or the groom or the chauffeur who instructs the boy, the domestic servant who instructs the girl, and with all those notions of guilty secrecy and of misplaced levity which are entailed; or with the idea that it is right and wise to understand these matters in due measure because their concerns are the greatest in human life.