By NELLIE M. SMITH. Dodd, Mead & Co. 138 pp. Price $.50; by mail of
THE SURVEY $.56
The market is flooded with publications on education with reference to
sex, and most of them are the product of superficial or one-sided
knowledge and a ready pen. The emphasis is unduly put on disease because
most writers are so impressed by the results of ignorance that they find
it impossible to take the attitude of the normal, healthy individual
whom they are trying to reach.
Among this mass of material, there have been two or three books which
could be put into the hands of young girls, but even these should be
used with care. The large demand for a good book and our failure to meet
it has been a source of anxiety to all who have appreciated the dire
need which it voiced. Then came The Three Gifts of Life, which answers
the appeal for knowledge concerning the mysteries of reproduction,
showing the origin of life in plants, animals and human beings—not
detached as physiological fact but interwoven in ordinary experience.
The Three Gifts are the three attributes by which the different forms of
life progress: i.e., dependence, as illustrated by plants; instinct,
plus dependence, as shown by animals; choice, plus dependence and
instinct, which are given to every human being.
Throughout the interesting account of plant and animal reproduction,
Miss Smith is working through the law of progress to the girls’
responsibility in the life of the race, showing how the reproductive
instinct can be made into a race instinct by means of the gift of
choice. The one adverse criticism I should make is calling any gift of
the flowers “poor” even in comparison. When the marvels of plant and
animal life are being so wonderfully revealed, there is a singular
opportunity to communicate the thrill and zest which come from close
contact with Nature: there is nothing poor in the “scheme of things.”
The book does not warn girls against men’s companionship; it does not
describe the horrors of venereal diseases; it does not frighten them
into a fear of all mankind by giving the details of prostitution. It
does not prophesy changes which take place during the adolescent period,
so that attention will be concentrated on a whole new set of feelings
which may or may not appear. On the contrary, it is all positive and
sane, and is by far the best book we have for educational work with
girls.