VI of her _Century of the Child_ well summarizes the reasons against the practice of selecting for children books that are "suitable" for them, a practice which she considers one of the follies of modern education.

The child should be free to read all great literature, and will himself instinctively put aside the things he is not yet ripe for.

His cooler senses are undisturbed by scenes that his elders find too exciting, while even at a later stage it is not the nakedness of great literature, but much more the method of the modern novel, which is likely to stain the imagination, falsify reality and injure taste.

It is concealment which misleads and coarsens, producing a state of mind in which even the Bible becomes a stimulus to the senses.

The writings of the great masters yield the imaginative food which the child craves, and the erotic moment in them is too brief to be overheating.