The great object which Bobby’s mother had in mind was to make these teachings of such a nature that the children would be impressed with the truth that they are only part of nature’s great and wonderful plan.

They were reminded again and again of the stages of life—plants, frogs, birds and mammals; of the millions of years it took to bring about these wonderful creatures and that at the top of the list, perfect, intelligent and supreme, stands man. Man, the most complex of all and the most perfect.

It was most natural for the children to consider nutrition and reproduction as the two most important essentials of any form of life.

Up to this point this was quite sufficient. The animals had instincts to nourish their bodies and also to procreate their offspring. This seemed their life object, but since man being the more intelligent, there must, of course, be other and broader outlets for this great intelligence.

48Their own bodies was a subject which took months to cover in study. They were shown charts of the human figure (both sexes) and all parts of the body were named in the same way as parts of the flower were named. Parts of the organs of reproduction were called by their names in telling of the works each part performed. No special stress was laid on the naming of these parts, but simply, casually, as one would speak of the various parts of the eye, or any other organ. In the same manner they were told of the harm done to their bodies in handling or touching any one part unnecessarily. If the eye, ear or nose was dug into, we would surely greatly injure ourselves, perhaps losing the use of that organ for the rest of our lives. The generative organs are no exception in this. To tamper with this most wonderful part of nature’s machinery, means not only sickness, dullness of intellect, stupidity, physical and mental weakness, but oftimes disables a little child for life.

In order to grow into perfect manhood or womanhood, all parts of the body must be developed naturally. If a little bud of a flower were to be roughly opened, it fades and dies long before it can carry out the great object of its life, namely, to develop the baby seeds within it.

So with a boy or girl who carries within their 49bodies the making of a human life. How terrible to cause that little life to be shattered, just through ignorance and neglect.

The children were taught that there was one beautiful time to come to them—to look forward to and to hope for that time when they can look into a tiny baby face, clasp two tiny baby hands, and feel this wonderful and beautiful creation a part of their being—the expression of their souls.

They were told to keep in mind this time which should come, and to keep their minds and bodies clean for this wonderful gift.

As all the children were still too young to go into the details of either menstruation or venerea diseases, it was considered best to dwell on the early tribes of man on up to marriage, and wait for future developments before going further. The tree dwellers and cave dwellers were already familiar stories to them. The fact that people lived together very closely; that the woman had great freedom in choosing the man whom she wished to be the father of her child, even as freely as the animals chose their mates; that in this freedom great mistakes were often made, such as that for a period some mothers chose their sons or brothers, or fathers to be the father of the new little one; that after a time it was found that this was very injurious to this new little child, for he 50often could not walk, or talk, and was weak, and sometimes a cripple—and more often died very young.

So the chiefs of these tribes got together and said this must not be, for if this continued there would be no strong young men or women to till the soil or fight off the animals, wild beasts or the enemy. Then a law was made that only those of the different tribes or families should choose each other for the parents of the future children, and here the lesson of the Buttercups came in—that often Mrs. Buttercup would reject the pollen from the stamen in her own house, but would accept the pollen from another buttercup house and become fertilized with that.

The part the two sexes took in different ways to strengthen and develop the race seemed of great interest to the children.

The work of hunting and fishing was left to the men of the family, while equally important work, that of cleaning............