The Relations of the Sexes (Duffey)/Chapter 12

MALTHUS, Mill and other social and political economists, have made the subject of population a matter for close and earnest study, and have given to the world the results of this study, in the form of treatises, which point out the natural checks to population, the dangers of superabundant population, and the necessity for limiting human fecundity. They demonstrate the direct connection between poverty and overpopulation, and declare that the only hope for the poor man, in the old world, at least, is in limiting the size of his family. They have told great truths, but unfortunately have told them in such an abstract way, that none but social economists like themselves can comprehend them. Moreover, their theories are not quite free from fallacies, which are much more discernible to the common mind than their truths. The facts they state are palpable enough, but the people whom they most wish to reach, are precisely of a class who are totally unable to comprehend their course of reasoning. These people's prejudices and suspicions are aroused instead. So they say, in bitterness, the rich, after depriving us of all the ​comforts and most of the necessities of life, and reducing us lower than the brutes, which are well-fed and cared-for, are not satisfied even yet, but want to step in and take away the poor man's last and only luxury, that of sexual gratification. They can only see the apparent injustice of the whole matter, and they are bound to stand upon their right as men—the right to produce themselves in kind.

The course of argument adopted by the philosophers above-named, always has been, and always will be, a failure. It does not descend to practicalities sufficiently to meet the wants of the common mind. Until some other mode is adopted, population will go on increasing and increasing, with the occasional checks of war, pestilence and famine, until the whole world shall present the spectacle to be viewed in China and India, where the ground can scarcely be made to supply the wants of the people who stand upon it, and where surplus children are disposed of with as little ruth as we drown surplus kittens and puppies. I do not, however, think the world will ever reach this state, because, before that time quite comes, humanity will have grown in wisdom, and shaken itself free from the shackles of ignorance and superstition in this respect.

These philosophers have not understood how to bring their reasoning down to common minds, by making war upon lust and superstition. Passion dominates in the human breast just as strongly as it did thousands of years ​ago in the time of the cave-dwellers. The only superiority which the man of to-day possesses over these primitive people, is in the development of the moral and intellectual traits which should bring the sensual nature under control. But how can we hope for this, when all classes are united in a sort of phallic worship, and continually spurring one another on to fresh zeal, by commendation of the most devout in this worship, and a condemnation of, and a pouring out of the vials of wrath upon, those who dare to stand before the temple of the passions with irreverence and indifference? The senses and their gratification are made everything,—the comfort and happiness of individuals and the good of society are lost sight of, that man's passions may be gratified to their fullest extent. In some states of society women are kept in a degraded and enslaved position for this avowed purpose. Among us, affairs in this respect are not much better; for women are charged by all that is sacred, not only to submit to the sensual desires of men, but to patiently bear the consequences, without daring to try to avert them.

The whole attitude of the sexes is ludicrously reversed. Men make themselves to appear as wishing for children with an unconquerable desire: women, as regarding them as a curse, and wishing to escape from them at any cost. Let any one look at the matter seriously, and then ask himself if this is really the true and relative position of the two sexes; and if it is not, then if any ​statement of the case which makes this seem true, can be a correct one?

We are assured from pulpit and from press, by physicians and by moralists generally, that children are the one sole end, aim, object and excuse of marriage; and therefore those who have the largest familes have most fully done their duty to society and to the world. In a sparsely settled country, there might be some show of reason in such arguments. Only if one pauses to consider, he will remember the teeming populations of the old world ready to send their surplus, in the form of emigration, wherever on God's footstool there is room for them. In the early ages of man's history, man's undoubted duty was to increase and multiply and replenish the earth; and nature, who perfectly understands her business, had then so constituted man that this was about the only work he was fit for—the female to bear children, and the male to feed and protect them.

What we need in the world now, is quality of population, not quantity. I think it was Mill, or at least somebody who had good common sense, who said "one lion is better than ten jackasses." There are plenty of people, such as they are, already—a great many too many of some classes. We want better, stronger, healthier, men and women, with brains well developed, and with unwarped moral natures. The world has been going on for a good many ages after the old plan of each married pair having as many children as they conveniently could, and ​now and then unmarried contributing in the quota; yet the progress of humanity towards the great hoped for millennial day is so imperceptible, that many declare the world is getting constantly worse instead of better. While admitting man's natural right to the enjoyment of sexual pleasure, and to the reproduction of his species, let us not regard this as limitless, but admit it to be subject to the same modifications and restrictions to which other human rights are liable. When we have conceded that point, the stronghold of the sensualist is beaten down, and victory is assured.

I utterly deny that marriage, in the present state of the world, is instituted solely for the perpetuation of the human race. I deny that this perpetuation of the race need be considered as anything more than a contingent result growing out of marriage, which has uses to humanity higher and broader than this. Nor is it the duty of married people to have children at all, if, according to their own best judgment, they would do an injury to these children by bringing them into the world. If men and women were born simply to perpetuate their species, and then die, why are they not made like certain insects, who leave this world as soon as that duty is accomplished? Why were they given powers of the intellect, and sentiments of the heart, if the whole aim of existence resolves itself into one crowning sensual act and its consequences? What was the use of creating men at all, in fact, if they were just intended to be born, procreate them ​selves, and then die, to make room for a succeeding generation? Is there no higher end to be gained than this? Do we not have an innate feeling that this is not the complete destiny of mankind; and look forward with a kind of pathetic hope that our children's children, or some remote generation of our descendants, may reach that happy day when the world shall be glorified and beautified through the exaltation of individual mankind?

Men and women were made for themselves, and for the age into which they were born. This is a truth which humanity has yet to realize. The man of the future is a possible, but an uncertain being. The man of to-day is an actual, living reality. It is his imperative duty to make the very utmost of himself. Every faculty must be educated, and brought into use, every good sentiment of the heart fostered into generous growth. Let him subdue his passions, and thoroughly master himself in all his instincts and habits, and then we shall know something of the nature of the true man. When he has done all this, let him have children if he dare. The responsibility of parentage will assume far greater proportions to such a man; he will take it upon himself with far greater hesitation, and watchfulness, and prayer, than does the sensualist, who accepts the consequences of the procreative act, only because he cannot deny himself its pleasures. Such a man, united with a woman equally glorious in her woman-hood, may hope to redeem the race. This man and woman will live for the present, as being their most ​immediate and tangible heritage from God. Though they will develope self, it will not be for selfish purposes, but because they can, through their own individuality, best benefit mankind. In marriage they will see greater opportunities for self-development and harmonized action. They may be human enough to desire to leave their representatives behind them in the form of children, and they will bless the world in doing so.

Why should we be content to postpone the good time coming until the remote future? Why should we not consider that it has come now, and each and all of us try to make our age more glorious and perfect than any which has preceded it? If our endeavors succeed in ever so little, we have given an upward impetus to humanity. This can never be done, though, while we are under the thraldom of the passions, or while we believe their gratification, and the results attendant upon that gratification, the utmost aim of our lives. We should learn to recognize ourselves as positive, existing facts, and our posterity as only probable and incidental. It may seem somewhat paradoxical, yet it is certain, that only in this way can we do our best duty to that posterity. They are, in fact, a continuance of ourselves, and the higher we elevate the selfhood of the present, the more perfect will be the selfhood of the future. Do I make my meaning clear?

I will illustrate, that there may be no doubt about it. A man of superior natural abilities, but of limited perun​iary means—himself perhaps one of a large family of children, who in consequence of their father's poverty received few advantages—marries a woman equaling himself in intelligence. Brought up to the idea that marriage pre-supposes children—as many as nature chooses to send—they soon have a large family upon their hands. The father is crushed and bowed down with the efforts he must make to keep them fed and clothed. He has no time for intellectual development; no time even to get out of his old groove, and fit himself into another, in which he might find things easier. It is work, work, year in and year out; a driving, slavish work for material necessities. He has not been without his ambitions and heart-longings; but they have been crushed and disappointed—there was no time, no opportunity, for any thing. He inwardly curses the blind fate which did not allow him to make use of life to better advantage; and dies perhaps, at last, sighing and sorrowing that he has not been enabled to give to his children the opportunities he himself missed. The mother, poor woman, goes her sorrowful, faithful careful way, in child-bearing and childrearing. She turns her face to the wall and weeps. perhaps, when she brings a woman-child into the world, to endure a woman's heritage of suffering and woe. This man and woman live, and they die. If the sum of their lives could be correctly cast, it would be found that they contained more trouble, anxiety and disappointment than joy. The most noticeable result of their existence is that ​they have increased the census-taker's duties. They have borne children to the state." But what of their children? Are they really worth all this cost of human labor and human disappointment? Some of them, perhaps, turn out well; that is, they take their places among other men and women, and are enabled to hold their own, as men and women go. Some of them live the life of their father and mother over again; and the rest prove black sheep, and help to swell the tide of sin in the world. Taken as a whole, we find the children good, bad, and indifferent; the good and the bad balancing and canceling each other, and the indifferent represented by cyphers. Which would have been best in this case, quantity or quality? Would not one-half or one-third the number of children, upon whom might be expended all the care of the parents, be likely to prove greater blessings to the world, besides permitting their parents to live a little for their individual selves, and to develope whatever was best within them, and all the better prepare themselves to be parents?

The picture I have drawn is a common one. I have no doubt that many men and women who read this page, will recognize their own portraits. Yet I have a book before me which says: "no sordid calculations of economy should have a feather's weight in the adoption of either [methods of avoiding increase of family]. Whom the Lord endows with existence, he provides for according to the need of his children, and no mere human foresight can discern whether economy lies in the increase or the diminution of the number of children.'"

​This is all cant. We see constantly that the Lord does not provide for those children whom the parents nave not taken the precaution to look after.

Exactly contrary to this in spirit was the remark of a lady of more than ordinary intelligence, and, as I believe, sincere purity of heart and fervent religious feeling. She was speaking of the large families which women raised a few generations ago, and how patiently they bore their cares, and discharged their duties. "It was no doubt," said she, "because of their deep religious feeling, which made women accept their apparent destiny so humbly and patiently. They were taught to believe that the Lord sent children, and that repining on their part would be the manifestation of direct antagonism to his will. Women have learned better than that now. They know that God often has nothing to do with it." I was startled by her words, but it was their truth as well as force, which startled me. Truly, the Lord has very little indeed to do with the having of children in many cases. It is the uncontrolled spirit of lust in man, which leads too often to the begetting of children. Have we, then, risen so little above the brutes, that we cannot learn to submit our passions to the dominion of reason, justice and morality? God has made laws in which he has ordained that certain consequences shall follow certain acts. But he has nowhere, in either written or unwritten decrees, ordained that we shall persist and continue in the performance of those acts, regardless of their immediate or ​contingent consequences. It is a solemn thing to evoke a human being to life—a being who shall live to all eternity, and whose everlasting good or ill may depend directly upon ourselves. Are we justified, then, in calling such a being lightly into existence, at a lustful impulse, and then blasphemously throwing the responsibility upon God? Be certain he will never accept it. We shall, fathers and mothers, every one of us, be held personally accountable by heaven for the future of our children, if we have not taken every means in our power to guard their young lives against evil;—if we have not first made ourselves wholly fit for parenthood, next made provision that we shall be enabled to do a parent's whole duty by them during their childhood, and at last send them forth to independent, individual existences in the world, a little better prepared to cope with evil, and assimilate good, than are we ourselves. Am I not right, parents, preachers, moralists and all? Lay aside your prejudices, and look the matter squarely in the face, and answer me unreservedly. We are expressly told that God will hold us accountable for every deed done in the body. Are we to understand that one class of acts, the most important, and, probably, the most serious in their consequences, are the one exception to the general rule?

From whence comes much of the wickedness and wretchedness with which the world is filled? From ignorant, poverty-stricken homes, where the duties of parentage are utterly misunderstood and disregarded; and where ​the principle of individual right in the matter of sexual gratification is held paramount to all others—regarded in just the same spirit, in fact, as by the Doctor quoted a few pages back. They will indulge in sensual pleasures, and if children come, why, let them look to God—or the devil, they don't mind which—for care. If this principle works such disastrous results in the lower ranks of life, is it any more justifiable in the higher? Or are we really to have an aristocracy in sensuality? It seems to me, the better have been our social, moral, intellectual and religious opportunities, the greater should be our control over self, and the better should be our example to those beneath us. Of him, to whom much is given, much will be required. Nevertheless, we find Dr. Todd makes a curious but characteristic statement of the somewhat notorious fact in regard to clergymen's families. Characteristic, I say, because he is first and foremost in the ranks of those who exalt the senses. He says: "You sometimes hear the people laugh at the large families of clergymen. You see the reason why they are large. They have too much conscience to violate the known laws of God." This is a curious statement, to say the least of it. Where is the law of God, direct or implied, which commands that man shall call into being lives which it is impossible for him to properly shield and direct? Where is the law of God, direct or implied, which commands or even excuses unbridled lust either in or out of marriage? That is what these large families mean, as their wives ​could tell you. Or are we to understand that it is out of a conscientious regard to the injunction to "increase and multiply and replenish the earth," rather than from sexual desire that clergymen approach their wives; and that when the promise of offspring is obtained, they maintain strict continence until again justified by time in the act of procreation? Do these conscientious men regard the known laws of God, by respecting the persons of their wives during pregnancy and lactation? I have heard confessions from the wives of clergymen which tended to give me a contrary belief. Why not say at once that clergymen are susceptible to human passion; that the very nature of their calling makes them more susceptible than most men; and then let us pray for them, that they may be delivered from the lusts of the flesh. This reckless shutting of the eyes to all the disastrous consequences usually attendant upon large families in conjunction with poverty, either by clergymen or laymen, is something terribly deplorable in its results. As I said in my last chapter, this extolment and justification of the sensual, makes many a man feel virtuous, who would otherwise know himself to be a monster of injustice and iniquity.

This increasing talk about children, by men—this attempt to impress womankind that motherhood is its legitimate and only aim, would be ridiculous, if it were not disgraceful. Do men, then, really believe that women would never have children, if they were not reasoned, and ​persuaded, and compelled to do it, by men who are themselves so professedly desirous of them? There is not one man in fifty who thinks, or cares, or who in his own heart pretends to think, or care, about offspring in this connection. It is only a ruse, and a very transparent, weak one at that, to exalt excessive desire, and make it appear reasonable and honorable in women's eyes. They feel that they need an excuse, and they are trying hard to invent one. But, gentlemen, it will not do. When you talk about the end and aim of marriage being the sexual union, we may possible believe you are speaking the truth, as regards yourselves; but when you talk about its being your duty to procreate children! Why don't you stop playing the hypocrite, and say in plain English, "men find the gratification of sexual passion very. pleasant; so pleasant, indeed, that they have no intention to forego it, under any circumstances whatever. Therefore, let women yield with a good grace, and resignedly submit to the inevitable consequences. That is, after all, what they were made for—to minister to the necessities of men. If we can make them submit any more gracefully by talking to them of the delights of motherhood, why, so much the better for us. If they are inclined to rebel, we shall be obliged to shut them up as they do in oriental countries."

When I see a man who is impressed with his duty to his race in this respect, perfectly content to do his duty, and no more, then I shall begin to believe these gentle. ​men. But, though I should search the world with a lantern, I am afraid I should discover such a man as hard to be found as Diogenes' honest one.

Let us tell the truth in this matter, men and women, all of us, and shame the devil. We recognize the beauty and purity of self-denial, but our passions are too strong for us, and so we try to find excuses which shall seem to justify our excesses. The fraud would have been detected and exposed long ago, if we were not all of us in the same boat,—at least such of us who do the most of the talking in the world,—and equally desirous of self-deception. Nature provides a sufficient excuse for the man who recognizes no religious nor moral obligation. Religion itself is called in to serve the more conscientious. This is indeed stealing the livery of heaven to serve the devil in.

As God's blessing always rests upon that which he ordains, and his curse upon that which he does not ordain, let us try this subject of unlimited offspring by this test. Dr. Reeves, whom I quoted in my last chapter, says furthermore: "It cannot be denied that women are often completely broken down and ruined in health, and hurried into the grave, in consequence of frequently-recurring pregnancy and child-birth. It is a common occurrence that many weakly, sickly mothers give birth to five or six children in six or seven years, and thus have around them, before they are twenty-five years of age, a large and helpless family. They are, therefore, soon ​worn out, look older than they really are, and very often entail feebleness on their offspring."

Does this look like a curse or a blessing of God? The sacrifice of mothers and children is certainly not what he intends in a perfect family.

But I hear some one saying, if women were what they might be physically,—what they are capable of being if they would regard the laws of health—they might have large families and be none the worse. That may or may not be. But it does not alter the present aspect of the case in the least. God says if frail women too frequently have children, and too many of them, their children shall die, and they themselves shall lose all that is worth living for. And children do die, and women become prematurely old, just as He says they shall. What is the remedy? Make ourselves, as men and women, as physically perfect as possible, before we dare to become fathers and mothers. In such a condition we may hope for children a little in advance of ourselves, especially if we are able to surround their youth with favorable circumstances. In course of time, by this means, there may be a race developed which shall be capable of producing itself tenfold without injury, and it may do so—if it seems necessary that it should. However, I strongly fear, that, under the most favorable circumstances, a race which should too greatly multiply itself, would by so doing, reduce itself back to its original feebleness.

A worn-out mother, burdened with family cares, nerves ​utterly disordered, and a body conscious of a perpetual sense of weariness, if not of actual pain, cannot either give birth to a healthy, well-conditioned child, or give that child proper physical and moral care afterwards. It is a well-understood thing that fathers in feeble health may have healthy children, provided they select mothers of strong healthy organizations for them. But a healthy father cannot expect a perfect child from an imperfect mother. Judge, then, if the condition of one-half the mothers in the land is favorable to the development of perfect offspring—mothers who bear children with such rapidity that a second babe comes before the first is out of arms; mothers who must unite with the exhausting and absorbing duties of maternity, a general household care whose days are filled with wearying, never ending labor, and whose nights are given over to sleeplessness and watchfulness? Well may the physicians talk of the deterioration of the American physical character. Here is found ample cause for it all. A broken-down and shattered nervous system can only repeat itself in the next generation. If it is true that American women of the present day cannot bear as many children as those of a few generations ago, it is a hopeful sign, for it shows that nature is trying to set safeguards around the race. and prevent the extreme of exhaustion among women.

If there is any hope for America, it is only through a less lustful and more conscientious fatherhood, and through a more properly developed motherhood. The very first ​step towards attaining to the latter, is signified in the word "freedom." Woman must be recognized as holding her motherhood entirely in her own hands, to accept or reject as she thinks best. An unwilling motherhood is a terrible, a cruel, an unjust thing. If it were not so common—so almost universal, I might say—we should stand aghast at the idea. The very words are a satire upon womanhood; and such a thing could never be, but for wrong states of society, and false conditions of women. But I hear a chorus of voices: women would never be mothers, if they could help it! That is a singular statement to make, to say the least. God made women, did He?—He intended that they should be the mothers of the race, and yet He implanted in their hearts such a strong distaste to the fulfilment of the natural and all-important function, that they escape it whenever possible! To prevent the world from being depopulated, it is necessary to detain women, to seclude them, to subject them forcibly to sexual association with men, and then to watch them closely lest they get rid of the unwelcome consequence of an unwelcome union? If this is the exact statement of affairs, it may possibly justify the measures taken to preserve the human race. But does any one in his sober senses believe this? Can it not be that motherhood is forced upon women at too early an age, before they are prepared for its duties, feel equal to its responsibilities, or comprehend its compensations? A girl of twenty, with little knowledge of herself, and still less of ​the world, is about as fit to be a mother, as the doll with which she was playing a few years, before. Have patience; when motherhood has developed within her, she will seek and take measures to secure its outward manifestation This enforced motherhood is the cruelest wrong which women sustain at the hands of men. It embitters their lives, and turns into a curse that which should have been a blessing. But say you, some women would not want children. Then don't let them have any. Their very lack of desire proves their unfitness. Children, in the hands of such mothers, will only go out into the world to swell the sum of human wretchedness. A woman who is not a mother by nature, can never force herself to be one. Nor does it follow that she is useless in consequence. The work of the world is so various in its character, that every one finds some place and some employment. If a woman cannot do one thing, she undoubtedly can do something else.

But is there any large class of women who would not sone time in their lives, long for children? Why, then, is sterility mourned as such a misfortune by women afflicted with it, and every means taken to remove it? Ask physicians whether women usually rejoice at their disability to bear children.

But, says a caviler, why should not a woman of twenty become a mother? Nature indicates her physical capacity. Why, my excellent reasoner, should not a girl of fourteen be required to become a mother? Nature has ​equally in her case demonstrated her physical capacity. But as we have seen fit, for the good of the individual and of society, to delay the exercise of this child-bearing function in the one case for several years after nature's plain indications, can we not stretch still another point, and allow the woman to wait until she desires motherhood before we require it of her? The interests of both mother and child would be advanced in consequence.

Again, if it is the natural duty of a married woman to bear children in as rapid succession as possible, how are we justified in allowing the unmarried woman to waste so many of her child-bearing years? This, too, is a social, not a natural, regulation. The Hindoo believes it a sin to lose a potential child. So he marries his daughter at the age of ten or eleven.

But there are several reasons why I believe that women are not called to either early or continued child-bearing. There are about thirty years of their lives in which they are capable of bearing children. During this time, if health and strength hold out, each woman might have from fifteen to thirty children—in fact, naturally considered, it is just as much her duty to have those numbers as to have ten. But it seems to me that these years of possible motherhood are thus prolonged, in order to give women entire freedom and ample time as to when they shall be mothers. A women may assume the duty at twenty, at thirty, or at forty, if she will. Again, though every month there is a period during which she may be ​come pregnant, yet nature has specially foreseen that she will not always have this desire, and has taken her health into careful consideration. The menstrual flow carries away the waste of her system, and prevents the plethoric condition which might result in its absence. Herein, it seems to me, is found the greatest distinction between the human female and the females of the lower animals. Nature says in regard to them, that they shall be mothers about once in so often, according to the laws of their being, because she has provided no alternative; and they do produce their young at regular intervals, except in the case of domestic animals, whose natural impulses are interferred with by men. Woman is especially permitted to avoid the functions of motherhood for years, without the slightest physical disturbance, or detriment to health. Whether she avoid it for a single month, a single year, or for all her life, she is equally free from blame, and simply taking advantage of the law which nature and nature's God have enacted in her behalf, with precisely such a contingency in view. Avoiding motherhood by legitimate means is evidently not a sin, for no punishment goes with it.

To the question whether women really would become mothers if it were left optional with them, there comes an answer from the Oneida Community, where, whatever may be their social peculiarities in other respects, they have certainly taken a step in advance of the world in recognizing the rights of motherhood. We are told that the women in that community become mothers from ​choice, quite as often as women in the outside world become mothers from necessity. And I do not doubt the statement.

We try to make God responsible for a great many of our misdemeanors. For instance, there is no crime we throw so continually upon his shoulders as that of infant murder; and we profess ourselves as “submissive to his will," when we ought to be beating our breasts and crying "mea culpâ, mea maxima culpâ!" Let me suppose a case. A young man and young woman marry. He may or may not be in good health, while she is perhaps utterly worn out by some occupation of her past life, which has been a great strain upon her nervous and physical system. Her physical exhaustion may have resulted from teaching; from operating upon a sewing-machine, or from standing behind the counter in a store; or it may have been reached by a life of fashionable dissipation preceding her marriage, or proceed from the undoubtedly unnecessary exertions incident upon preparing a large and elegant trousseau. At least one entire year of rest should be hers, before she should think of assuming maternal functions. But her husband, who would not in any way "thwart the divine intentions," makes her a prospective mother before the honeymoon has waned. In her exhausted condition, pregnancy comes with a thousand ills which ought not naturally to attend it. Her child is born in due course of time—a little, puny thing, who looks from the first as if it were sorry it ever entered this troublous world. Neither ​mother nor babe is in proper condition; and when that time of trial in an infant's life approaches—teething—it shuts its sad eyes and goes out from the world. Its parents are overwhelmed with grief: but, upheld by their religion, they try to be "resigned," and not to “murmur at God's will!" Why do they not open their eyes, and see that the only will God had in the matter was, that they should wait for true conditions, before they assumed paternity and maternity, and as they did not do that, he punished them just as surely as he causes the unripe fruit to drop from a blighted or unhealthy tree. These are the laws to which we must submit ; and the penalties of these laws we can only evade, by respecting his higher laws regarding ourselves and our offspring. The terrible mortality of our children lies much of it at this very door. Parents unfitly assume parental duties, when justice to their children, and wisdom, should make them pause and consider.

Turning now from the children to the mothers, is there no pity for the women who are condemned to the perils and pains of child-bed so frequently and so unnecessarily? It seems strange to me that men who show such tenderness to their wives in all other respects, are so inconsiderate here. I will not especially refer to the large mass of women who have the pains unaccompanied by any great degree of perils, though it seems to me a little mercy would not be lost even upon them. I am thinking of the women who are deliberately and pitilessly murdered ​by their husbands, and offered as sacrifices in this terrible phallic worship, which exalts the passions above human life. Women die in child-bed not infrequently, whose husbands know there is every probability of their dying, if they are brought to it. But is there one pregnant woman the less for that fact? And what does it matter whether it be a single delivery, or a series of deliveries, which results in death to the wife and mother? The murder is accomplished all the same, whether it is the first or the last which kills her, or whether she die in or out of child-bed, if it is the too heavy strain of enforced maternity which causes her to lose her life. Sometimes I have thought that, sadder even than these sad deaths, were the cases of those women who sacrifice their youth and health to the giving birth to, and the care of a numerous family, and when they are released by nature from such duties, instead of being still in the prime of life, are decrepid and aged, and linger on in a premature senility.

"But for what purpose is marriage ordained?" God set men and women in pairs, that they might perfect each other, and complete each other's happiness. The irresistible desire for companionship is what incites to marriage more than the intoxication of the senses, let passion-worshipers say what they will to the contrary. A perfect marriage means perfect companionship; a blending of individual tastes, wishes and wills; a rounding off of angularities of disposition and character, and a forget​fulness of self in one another; a mutual incitement to greater moral development, and a mutual helping up the heights toward perfection. It means a union of all that is manly and womanly in a perfect whole, that shall be capable of quadruple happiness over that of the unmarried individual, since each shall see, hear and enjoy with his or her own faculties, and with those of the other also. It means trust and fidelity, and that perfect love which casteth out all fear. The life of such a completely married couple shall be a rich strain of harmony, perfect in all its chords.

Marriage will develop the traits of the individual, be they good or bad, as no other discipline will; and within its enclosure are found the most perfect happiness and the most complete misery the world contains. Marriage broadens the outlook upon life, and gives us correcter and more charitable views of our fellow creatures. It is a unity of life and all that constitutes life, to the parties entering it. It is of the heart, of the soul, and of the body; and the latter is only justified, in pure minds, when the former has already taken place. Do not drag marriage down to the domain of the senses. The depravity of man is inclined to do that sufficiently already, without any encouragement.

When this marriage is perfectly consummated, then God has said here is the fitting place for the tender bud of humanity to find shelter and fostering care. So He has ordained that marriage shall be the abiding place of little ​children. Then let them come when a tender, loving motherhood calls for them, and when the father, as well as the mother, is ready to forget self in these dearer little selves that are in time to take his place on he human stage. Let them come, as many and as often as they will, so that they are evoked in love, and welcomed in tenderness; so that they shall be sure of meeting the kindest care and protection, and that their existence has not been the excuse for the unrestrained gratification of unholy lust.

In such a marriage, when women are permitted to take their motherhood into their own hands, then shall they not say, "in sorrow have I brought forth children?"