In no sea have women been more often in danger of drowning than that of sex.

There ought to be no question as to which is the better method of salvation.
It is difficult nowadays to find any serious arguments against the desirability of early sexual enlightenment, and it is almost with amusement that we read how the novelist Alphonse Daudet, when asked his opinion of such enlightenment, protested--in a spirit certainly common among the men of his time--that it was unnecessary, because boys could learn everything from the streets and the newspapers, while "as to young girls--no! I would teach them none of the truths of physiology.

I can only see disadvantages in such a proceeding.

These truths are ugly, disillusioning, sure to shock, to frighten, to disgust the mind, the nature, of a girl." It is as much as to say that there is no need to supply sources of pure water when there are puddles in the street that anyone can drink of.

A contemporary of Daudet's, who possessed a far finer spiritual insight, Coventry Patmore, the poet, in the essay on "Ancient and Modern Ideas of Purity" in his beautiful book, _Religio Poetae_, had already finely protested against that "disease of impurity" which comes of "our modern undivine silences" for which Daudet pleaded.