Margaret Warner Morley

“ In all nature-work with the child, the subjects treated should be made interesting and beautiful. This cannot be too strongly insisted upon. The child has a right to the pleasure, the elevation of sentiment, the play of imagination which the contemplation of nature is able to give in such a peculiar degree. He has a right to the romance of the flower, cloud, bird, fish, animal life, plant life, in all their ramifications. It is a part of his soul-development. ”

“ All the facts of sex-life can be learned in the flower, and the associations thus indelibly impressed cannot fail to leave at least a trace of fragrance and loveliness on even an obtuse nature. No matter what the later experiences or mistakes may be, the whole conception of this side of life cannot sink so low as might be the case if there were not this flower-sweet background. ”

“ The pure but ignorant boy going for the first time into the new life of the school, looking up to the older boys with that peculiar veneration the younger boy almost always feels for the older, moved in his senses by what he hears and sees, may speedily forget such home warnings as seem vague and pointless, and he may yield himself to a course most disastrous to his future. ”

“ When the embryo has grown to its perfect form, the egg-shell is broken and out swims the young fish. When it leaves the shell we say it hatches, just as we say the plant embryo sprouts when it leaves the egg-shell or seed-shell. Like the pollen of the flower, the fertilizing cells of the fish cannot act upon any ova but those of its own species. ”

“ When the graceful tribute of the bee to the flower is presently understood, and the child learns that the seeds of the flower have to thank the bee for their life, the mind expands yet more, and glows at the thought of this relationship in which each of these charming creatures practically preserves the life of the other. ”

“ Nothing is so sensitive as the reproductive system. Lacking certain stimuli which it finds in its natural surroundings, it will not become active. The goldfish in the globe will, if a female, have the ovary containing undeveloped ova, the male will have the testicles containing the fertilizing cells, but these will not mature. It is as though the whole system of the fish missed the freedom of space, the changes of season, the variety of substances at the bottom of the water,—all that goes to make "home" for it, and so languished in body as well as spirits. ”

“ The life battle of the youth who has been carefully instructed and preserved clean in mind and body is very different from that of him who has been weakened in will and perverted in mind from lack of such preservation; he knows that purity is both possible and good, and desires it above all things for his sons, both for their happiness and for their material success in life.
Habits of thought and action have an incalculable influence upon the body as well as upon the mind; and here as everywhere else, the ideal, whether it be high or low, will control the destiny of the man. ”

“ Many birds pair for life, returning to the same nest year after year. Nor should the instruction fail to impress upon the young mind the advance of love and tenderness on the parent for the offspring as we ascend the scale of life. The flowers, the fishes, the frogs, entrust their offspring to the care of Mother Nature; the birds cannot do this. The mother and the father of the helpless little creatures take deep joy in sacrificing their own freedom and strength and time to this loving duty. A bird will even lose its life for its young, trying to drive off an enemy ”

“ Every parent of a purely reared child is putting a stone in the foundation of prosperity for this wonderful new civilization, which will go on evolving, or die of decrepitude, just as its central dynamic force, the sex life of the people, finally decides. Sex immorality is, as every one knows, one of the signs of the approaching death of a nation.
Few young mothers realize the great need of watchfulness against the formation of bad habits in even young children. And many make the mistake of supposing that with children instruction can take the place of watchfulness. ”

“ The plant is alive; it eats, it breathes; sometimes it even moves. It breathes the same air that we do, only it takes it in through tiny pores in the leaves. Eating and breathing, the plant continues to grow, leaf after leaf unfolding. At last, in the axil of one of the leaves [Pg 63] there comes a little bud that does not unfold into a leaf but into a flower.
The appearance of this first blossom on the plant the child has himself raised from the seed will be watched with eagerness, and its advent can be made a subject of general pleasure and notice in the home. ”

“ To keep the mind of the child wisely impressed with the beauty, the achievements, of the great reproductive force in nature, which is directly responsible for every living thing on the earth, is to help immeasurably toward branding a high instead of a low ideal on his soul,—an ideal which he cannot lose when he reaches the great climax that transforms him into an adult capable of reproducing his kind, and when whatever most powerfully influences him will become a determining factor in the administration of his whole after life. ”

“ The parent must not forget that the child's mind is a blank page upon which any picture may be drawn, and that the child sees only what is presented to him. The thousand problems, the thousand troubles and fears, and all the knowledge of evil that burden the mind of the adult are entirely absent from that of the child. ”

“ Thus through his botany the child can get a more vivid sense of the life of the past, can have a link forged in that invaluable mental chain which links him, mind, body, and soul, to everything else in the universe, and the consciousness of which is one of our most precious and helpful endowments in this life. ”

“ But sometimes the offspring inherits only the best in the parents, and so is better than they.
Thus in gathering his seeds, the child will select only the largest and best and take them from only the best plants to put in his garden the next year, at the same time planting beautiful truths in the garden of his soul. Not the least of these truths is a profound sense of the immutability of law. Through his nature-work the child can learn as nowhere else the stern, unbreakable decrees of law, and the respect and reverence due to it from every intelligent being. ”

“ Moreover a certain shyness, which often makes it more difficult for fathers to talk to their sons on these matters than for the mothers to do so, would not have existed if they themselves as children and youth had been educated to a complete knowledge of the sex-life by one or both parents. The cause of this shyness is in many cases ignorance of how to present the facts, and a misconception of the difficulties of speaking to a pure-minded child about them. Nothing surprises the parent more than the way difficulties vanish when once the course of instruction to the youth has been entered upon. ”

“ At first the parent attends to the child's wants, later the child must care for himself; and while he ought not to be burdened with too much thought of his body, yet there are a few simple rules of hygiene which he should follow as a matter of habit, and there is one subject upon which he should be most carefully instructed,—that is, maintaining the sexual purity of his body. He should be taught from the beginning to think of his body as the sacred temple of his soul, which it is a sin against nature and against God to defile. ”

“ How can it fail to be the duty of every parent to protect the child against the chance of making these fatal mistakes through ignorance? Young people cannot be kept wholly out of reach of temptation, nor would it be best for them if they could be. Far better is it so to strengthen the moral fibre that they can resist.
From time to time there appears in [Pg 177] our best publications an appeal from some noted educator for the better instruction of youth at home, and their almost universal plea is that the youth be told by the mother the facts needed to give him a reverence for womanhood. ”

“ When the seed is fully formed, its seed-leaves full of food, its embryo perfect, then we say it is ripe. It no longer needs to draw nourishment from the sap of the parent-plant. It is able to start in the world on its own account. When the seed ripens, its little stem withers away, so that the seed lies loose in the pod. In the case of the bean-pod, when the seed becomes free the pod opens, and the seed or bean, as we call it, falls out. ”

“ With the child the higher emotions which always accompany reproductive activity in the bird life should be kept ever prominent,—the affection between the parents, their care and love for each other, the care and love for the helpless young, their happiness in this duty as shown in their song and bright colors. Unlike the fish and the frog, the bird cannot develop unless the egg is kept warm, and after it hatches the young bird cannot take care of itself for several weeks. ”

“ What parent would allow his child to go untaught in the particulars concerning truth-telling, honesty, cleanliness, and behavior, trusting that in some way the [Pg 10] child would discover the facts necessary to the practice of these virtues and live accordingly? And yet with apparent inconsistency one of the prime virtues is neglected; one of the most vital needs of every human being—the understanding of his sex-nature—is too often left entirely to chance. Not only is the youth uninstructed, but no proper way of learning the truth is within his reach. ”

“ The migration of birds is alone enough to fill the mind with enchanting dreams. To know that every night in late summer and in autumn there is a stream of birds moving high in the air along the line of the sea-coast and of the great valleys is enough to awaken fancy. ”

“ It is a beautiful fact that the plant [Pg 54] world offers illustrations of all the underlying phenomena of the reproductive life, and that through the flowers the little one can get his first introduction to the great subject. Not that he will at first understand the connection between the flower life and the human life, but the facts in the flower having been clearly perceived, there is nothing easier or more beautiful than to expand the idea when the time comes, until it embraces all life. ”

“ Perhaps nothing will help a young man at the most critical age of his life so much as his love and faith in his father. And perhaps nothing will tend to lift the whole subject of paternity in the popular mind to the plane where it belongs, as will this love and knowledge, when it is bred in the child from his early years. Many difficulties in handling this subject that become insuperable might never even exist if the [Pg 122] knowledge of fatherhood, if love and respect for it and for the father as the giver of life, were bred into the boy at an early age. ”

“ Every human being must sooner or later know the facts concerning the origin of his life on the earth. One of the most puzzling questions is how and when such information should be given to the young.
There is nothing the parent more desires than that his child should have a high ideal in regard to the sex-life and that he should live in accordance with that ideal, yet nowhere is careful and systematic education so lacking as here. ”