36
SEX IN EDUCATION.
features of each, and reveals the demand foi a special training. This divergence, however, is limited in its sweep and its duration. The difference exists for a definite purpose, and goes only to a definite extent. The curves of separation swell out as childhood recedes, like an ellipse, and, as old age draws on, approach, till they unite like an ellipse again. In old age, the second childhood, the difference of sex becomes of as little note as it was'during the first. At that period, the picture of tho
“ Lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose, and pouch on side,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans every thing,”
is faithful to either sex. Not as man or woman, but as a sexless being, does advanced age enter and pass the portals of what is called death.
During the first of these critical periods, when the divergence of the sexes becomes obvious to the most careless observer, the complicated apparatus peculiar to the female enters upon a condition of functional activity.