The Relations of the Sexes (Duffey)/Chapter 13

I HAVE recently had opportunity to examine a book entitled "French Home Life," written by an English author, and claiming to give what English and American readers have never before had an opportunity of receiving, a correct description of French men and French women in their domestic relations. It speaks of husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, children and homes. Though the writer does not admire all the traits of the French character, still his picture of their domestic life is a mosť pleasing one. He tells us that the wickedness among the the highest and lowest classes of Paris, the report of which goes out to the world as a sample of French morality, is, after all, but the scum and dregs of a society, the middle strata of which are singularly free from unhappinesses and irregularities.

But the author is shocked that the birth-rate of France has fallen off forty per cent. since the time of the Revolution. He says "it must be borne in mind that this diminution does not result from any falling off in the proportionate rate of marriage, which keeps up its place in comparison with other countries. It is solely brought about by the wilful refusal of married people to become ​fathers and mothers, as married people do elsewhere. The rejection of paternity is a consequence of the excessive prudence with which the entire subject is handle: by the French; they do not marry unless they think they can afford it; they do not have children unless they think they can provide for them. It in no way affects the attachment between man and wife; it in no way diminishes their affection for their children when they have them. On the contrary, their family tenderness is demonstrative and excessive, as has been repeated many times throughout these sketches of their home life. But the mere existence of this resolute unwillingness to have children, places France in a low position before Europe, and suggests grave doubts as to the moral value and efficacy of a system which, whatever be the happiness it produces, results in so flagrant a negation of the first object and first duty of marriage."

The writer considers this a terrible moral wrong. But let us try the whole matter by his own test. He says: "As marriage is the real starting-point of home-life—as the happiness of husbands, wives, and children depends, in a great degree, on the conditions under which it is realized and worked out—it is fair, and even necessary, to judge it, not only in its beginnings and in its organization, but in its results as well." That is precisely what we wish to do in this phase of their married life, which results in small families. We can only judge whether it is good or ill by its consequences.

​He himself speaks of the "improvident marriages" which sometimes take place in England, and which are "rash and dangerous," "lead to all kinds of worry," "and sometimes end in downright misery." What is the sum and substance of this "worry" and "misery" which are connected with the "improvident" marriages of England? It is the large families which usually follow them, for which no provision has been made. The author does not attempt to deny this. Still, he admits that, in spite of all this, the French marry much more frequently than the English, striking as he declares, the happy medium among all nations. Ireland comes first in the list, with her improvident marriages and unchecked families, producing, as no one need be told, unlimited poverty and suffering. Her proportion is one marriage for each ninety inhabitants. France is sixteenth in the list, with one marriage in one hundred and twenty-two inhabitants; and England comes twenty-seventh and last but one, with one marriage to every one hundred and thirty-seven inhabitants. Yet England, with this small proportion in marriages, has children at the rate of one to thirty; France at the rate of one to thirty-nine.

This subject of offspring is only an incidental one in the discussion of the whole subject of French marriages, the results of which the author quoted finally sums up in the following manner: "We see that the French marry rather more than we do; that, in nineteen cases out of twenty, the love which did not exist beforehand, grows up ​afterward; that there is little material misery resulting from imprudent marrying; that separations are rare and divorces are impossible; that French homes, in almost every rank, are generally attractive models of gentleness and kindness; that, in certain cases, the pursuit of mutual happiness is based on theories and practices in which the highest forms of skill are successfully employed; that children, few though they be, are fondly cherished; that the association between man and wife assumes, in the lower middle classes, an intensity of partnership for which it is not easy to find a parallel elsewhere; that religion, if it does no good to marriage, cannot be said to really suffer harm from it." In brief, he admits a far higher state of happiness in married life than in England, the social habits of which he declares, are regarded with extreme disgust by French people, who "point to England at this moment as the country which produces probably the largest amount of conjugal irregularity."

Even as this author briefly compares the customs of the two countries, the balance of happiness and morality seems all on the side of France, with her small families. But let us go over the subject a little more carefully. The English, as a people, recognize the need of restricting population to such an extent, that marriage is greatly discouraged among them, and occurs with far less frequency in England than in France. It is a well-established fact, that the discouragement of marriage is a direct encouragement of prostitution and kindred immoralities. Is ​that a state of thing to be desired? A man who is told he cannot marry, falls most readily into evil courses, has his natural instincts and longings for domesticity and homelike pleasures blunted and destroyed; learns to hold women in contempt; and, when finally he is allowed to marry, which is probably toward middle life, his habits have become fixed, and he makes neither a kind, considerate, nor faithful husband.

As society now is, this discouragement of marriage leaves thousands of women unprovided for, and shuts up those of the higher classes to drag out isolated lives, in which their womanly instincts are suppressed, and their natures are narrowed and soured. Another class of women is thrown upon the world to pick up a precarious livelihood as best it may; and finally many of its members sift through the social sieve, into the depths of prostitution. So that, perhaps, the man and woman who ought to have been happy husband and wife, in a union blessed of God, unite in a lustful union within the precincts of the brothel, from which all purity is burned away by the fires of base desire; and so lead each other down to perdition. These are the natural, inevitable consequences of discouraging marriage. Would it not have been far better for this man and woman to have married, as a tribute they owed to virtue, to society, and to their own happiness, and then to have limited their family afterwards within the bounds of prudence? Looking at the French system of marriage, ​as explained to us by a not unprejudiced observer,—who if he could have detected a flaw in it, or an evil result from this phase of it, would surely have let us known it,—we find the people of France far wiser in their day and generation. They encourage virtue and domesticity, by allowing their young people to marry. Prudence is only permitted to come in when it can work no harm, but positive good.

And what harm can the author to whom we refer possibly see in this plan? He admits that the French bring philosophy and science in, to produce far greater happiness in marriage than any other class of people. May not this, then, be part of their philosophy and science? Is the wearing goad of poverty, felt by the parents of large families and small means, productive of either happiness or morality?

The only argument (if that can really be called an argument which is only a statement of a prejudice), which this man brings to bear, is that the French make "insufficient use of marriage," and that they do not regard it, as do the English, "as a link between successive generations." As far as the "insufficient use" is concerned. I think it will strike all unprejudiced observers that the French make more use of marriage than the English, inasmuch as they secure so much more apparent happiness in it. As to the other objection, it is a natural one to an Englishman's mind, since in his country estates own families, and the continuation of the family is considered ​of more importance than the happiness of the individual. But in countries where primogeniture is unrecognized and entail comparatively unknown, it does not really matter whether certain families or branches of families are perpetuated or not. One man is just as good as another, and if one man has not a son, another has.

But if this limiting of families is really a sin, let us see if we can find in what that sin consists. There is nobody harmed. On the contrary, direct good accrues to parents, and to the fewer children who are allowed to come into existence. It is impossible to say that the unborn children are injured; for a person cannot be injured who has no existence. Married happiness is not only more generally permitted, but is much greater in consequence. There is no natural law violated, or we should find bad physical and moral consequences. I have never heard it said—this man does not hint at such a thing, and he certainly would have done so, if he had perceived the opportunity—the French women suffer, and are broken in health, in consequence of their refusal to bear children. He speaks only of a moral offense. But how can there be a moral offense, when its consequences are all good, and none of them evil? A moral offense always brings its own punishment. A man may visit houses of prostitution and escape serious injury; nevertheless we call his a moral sin, because such great risks are run by both men and women who indulge in it, and it is almost certain to work them such harm in every conceivable way. Pros​titution is not a fancied sin, dependent on the way one looks at the matter; but a terrible crime, the dire effects of which are so palpable to all, that those who would excuse and defend it if they could, dare not!

The social habits of these French people offend prejudices alone, but prejudices which have become engrafted into the very natures of the large class of men, from ignorance, and from long continuance in certain grooves of thought. But all reforms have to meet and overcome prejudices. It is well for them if they have nothing more terrible to deal with. In the dark ages, under the feudal system, the right of the lord over the bodies of the wives and daughters of his serfs was maintained for a long time, and very fierce, no doubt, was the storm of prejudice raised, when the right was first questioned.

"Have I not control over all that my vassal possesses, and are not his wife and daughters among his possessions? Therefore who shall dare to question my right over them. It is overturning the whole state of society!" The dismayed lord was right. It was overturning society. But the world saw the overthrow, and society did not resolve itself into chaos in consequence. So it may possibly prove to be in this case. At all events, it is best not to denounce a new thing simply because it is new. It is best to wait until we can pick some flaw in the plan, and detect some unfortunate result among the people who have tried the principle for three-quarters of a century, before we utterly condemn what we have never given a fair trial

​I read lately as the most effective argument which could be brought against the plan of limiting the number of children in a family, the supposition that parents content themselves with two children, and these two die, then will they not regret that they have no more? I knew a family of six children, and they all died. I do not think they found six any easier to lose than two. Such arguments on either side, are, however, begging the question. It is possible if fewer children were born, those children would be taken better care of, and there would not so many of them die.

If small families bring unmistakeable blessings with them in the form of happiness and content, then I cannot help but feel that this blessing means God's smile. If large families are attended by misery, want, hard work, sickness and death, then I think it is evident that God's curse is upon them.

The argument most frequently used is, that the Bible commands us "to increase and multiply and replenish the earth." Is it quite certain that the Bible addresses these words to us individually? In my Bible the command, together with various other directions and permissions, is given to Adam and Eve—a couple who existed under very different circumstances from ourselves. If ever the world becomes depopulated, or seems in danger of becoming so, then, perhaps, we may regard it as a duty to "replenish" it. But there seems no need just now for special exertions in this direction. If this is obligatory ​on all men and women from Adam's time till now, it is obligatory equally on the married and the unmarried. Marriage is entirely ignored in the injunction, for it does not read "marry and increase, etc." A man and woman are bound to begin to "increase and multiply" as soon as nature declares their capability for such work. More than this, any delay in this increase and multiplication of the human species by delaying marriage, is in direct disobedience to the divine command. The Irish, of all the civilized world, are nearest right in marrying and multiplying as fast as they can. If it is wrong to limit children for one reason, it is wrong for another. Indeed, are the reasons of the French and the English so very different in the matter after all? The one marries and has few children. The other does not marry, and has none, or if he has children, refuses to recognize them, and allows them to go to swell the list of paupers and criminals. The latter pays court to vice in his endeavor to equalize the population; the former recognizes virtue and matrimonial happiness. The Englishman says: "It is wrong to marry when you know you cannot support a family." The Frenchman replies: "I quite agree with you that it is wrong to have a family when you cannot support one; but marriage is better than profligacy." And I think the Frenchman has the best of it. The Englishman is nearly, if not quite, as regardless as the Frenchman, of the injunction to "increase and multiply," and he is regardless of other duties also, which the Frenchman observes.

​But do those people who are so strenuous on the point of permitting as many children to come as will, use no preventives against conception? What is nursing considered by most mothers, but a fortunate and welcome preventive for a limited time? How many mothers are there, who use no other preventives, who do not extend the time of this preventive from six months to a year beyond what nature justifies them in doing, if they consider the good of their children? How many husbands are there who do not take advantage of this preventive?

But what is the special objection against the prevention of conception? These self-styled moralists will answer; because God has ordained that the carnal union of man and woman shall be fruitful, and any ways or means taken to prevent this result are in direct antagonism to his laws. Very well. I will accept this definition for just as long as these moralists will acccept it for themselves, when they are brought down to the strict letter of their own law. To fulfil this law, and not to make a mock of God and his ordinances, this carnal union should be entered into with the special end of offspring in view, and when this result is accomplished, the sexual conjunction should not be repeated. At any times when this result is not probable or possible, such as at certain periods in each month, when conception cannot take place; when the result is already accomplished; and when the mother is nursing her babe; such a conjunction is not justifiable, because impregnation is impossible, and it would degrade the act ​from the wise and solemn importance which God has placed upon it, to a mere gratification of sensual pleasure. I like this ground exceedingly well myself; but how many men, even of the strictest moral school, are willing to accept it? "And they which heard it, being convicted by their own conscience, went out one by one." So we find these reasoners are not so much in earnest after all. Yet the only man who has any right to hint to us God's intentions in this respect, is the one who is willing to make his life perfectly consistent with his words. And, even then, it is left an open question whether he is entirely right in his views.

The same style of argument goes on to say that this prevention of conception is a waste of man's seed. So it is. But a man who has perhaps fifty sexual unions with his wife (and I under-estimate rather than over-estimate), for every child that she can possibly bear to him, knowingly wastes a great deal of seed, and does not seem to have a troubled conscience about it either. For all the good this seed does, in these cases, it might as well have been spilled on the ground. Further than this: the semen of man is filled with numberless little living moving animalculæ or spermatozoa. It is supposed by those who have made this matter a study, that one of these sperm-cells alone is united with the female germ or ovum in impregnation. All the rest—the actual principle of life—are discarded and left to perish. How can these conscientious men, who set such a value on their seed ​dare to waste so much of it in a single copulation, even though it be a fruitful one?

However, the semen of man is not seed at all, in spite of its name. It is only the pollen of the bi-sexual flower of humanity, which unites with the germ-cell contained in the pistil or ovary. The two united and developed, form the seed, which, when it is fully ripe, bursts from its enclosing pod or uterus, and escapes,—a new born child. Thus if we may accept the analogy between plant and animal life and sexual functions—an analogy which is, no doubt, complete and perfect in all its operations—it is the child itself which is the seed. Therefore the semen is of no more importance than the pollen, which may be scattered by every wind, to the four-quarters of the earth, and yet no "seed" be wasted, for that cannot be wasted which as yet has no existence. Abortion or infanticide are the only possible means of wasting seed.

Another objection urged against making a certain kind of knowledge general, is, that those will obtain it who will make a bad use of it. Are any so ignorant as not to be aware that all those who are likely to make a bad use of this knowledge, have it already; and that those only are ignorant of it who stand really in need of it? As for any wife going astray because her husband has learned ner how to do so without danger of detection, if ignorance is all that restrains her now, her chastity is hardly worth the keeping. "Every one knows," to use the lan​guage of a well-known author, "that the most obtrusive and sensitive stickler for the etiquette of orthodox morality is the heartless rake;" therefore, I will venture to say, that two out of three who make this objection are those whose own characters are very far from being above reproach. The writer from whom we have just quoted, continues, addressing the class to whom he refers:—"You seem to presuppose—from your own experience, perhaps—that the hearts of all men, and more especially of all women, are deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; that violence and vice are inherent in human nature, and that nothing but laws and ceremonies prevent the world from becoming a vast slaughter-house or a universal brothel." On another page of his book the author says, truly, "These objectors pay their wives, their sisters, and their daughters, but a poor compliment! Is, then, this vaunted chastity a mere thing of circumstance and occasion? Is there but the difference of opportunity between it and prostitution? Would their wives, and their sisters, and their daughters, if once absolved from the fear of offspring, all become prostitutes—all sell their embraces for gold, and descend to the level of the most degraded?—I should like to hear these gentlemen explain, according to what principle they imagine the chastity of their wives to grow out of a fear of offspring; so that, if released from such fear, prostitution would follow. I can readily comprehend that the unmarried may be supposed careful to avoid that situa​tion in which no legal cause can be assigned; but a wife must be especially dull, if she cannot assign, in all cases, a legal cause; and a husband must be especially sagacious, if he can tell whether the true cause be assigned or not.—Yet conjugal chastity is that which is especially valued. The inconstancy of a wife commonly cuts much deeper than the dishonor of a sister. In that case, then, which the world considers of the highest importance, the fear of offspring imposes no check whatever.—Constancy, where it actually exists, is the offspring of something more efficacious than ignorance. And if in the wife's case, men must and do trust to something else, why not in other cases, where restraint may be considered desirable? Shall men trust in the greater, and fear to trust in the less."^[1]

I have said, in a previous chapter, that I think women should be left free to accept or reject motherhood. I now say that they should only accept it when their hearts go out towards it, and they feel that it will prove a blessing. They should reject it, when the circumstances which will attend it are likely to turn it into a curse in many ways. But the great cry of suffering women is, "How shall we refuse it?" Could this question be answered satisfactorily to them, I know that to an overwhelming majority of women life would suddenly be flooded with a light and beauty that for long years has ​been absent from it; that a weight of fear and trouble would be lifted from their hearts, that has bowed them down, and made them feel helpless and hopeless. I am not talking at random here; I know just what I am saying. And I know, if they dared to speak, there would come to me as with one voice, the words of hosts upon hosts of women in corroboration of my assertion.

I do not think science has reached its ultimatum in this particular. If scientific men had put out as much effort to make investigations which should be of practical value to humanity, as they have to stifle speech and fetter thought, in obedience to blind prejudice and abominable superstition, the world would be further advanced in morality and happiness than it is to-day. Physicians know, as no other class of persons can do, the need of this knowledge. They know the dreadful effects of ignorance and uncontrolled lust. There is not one of them who has not upon his hands a list of patients, more or less long, the victims of abortion, who might have been saved from crime and invalidism if they had known what it is every woman's right and duty to know. And yet these physicians dare not speak, and say what they know to be the truth, lest a mock morality be offended. That they are not ignorant of the exceeding desirability of this knowledge, I have had from the lips of more than one of them. Still, when they give public utterance to their opinions, they join in the general denunciation of preventives to conception, shrewdly trusting that their readers may receive the ne​cessary knowledge through the very means they take to condemn it.

Sufficient practical means have been discovered to make it possible for a whole nation to modify the size of its families, so that a decrease of forty per cent. shall be noted in the census-taker's returns:—means sufficiently to be depended upon in their operation to enable the French wife to say with perfect confidence: "My husband and I think we have as many children as we can do justice to, and we do not intend to have any more."

Women should have knowledge of these means in or der to save them from the terror and dread which, if they would admit the truth, four out of every five would confess, overcloud and destroy the happiness of all their child-bearing years—embittering affection and killing passion. They should have it, that there may be light, and hope, and love, in their homes—and even conjugal delight; for I cannot conceive that that which is so eminently desirable and honorable in a man, should be valueless and shameful in a woman. They should have it that they may not have offspring forced upon them before they are ready for them; that the little ones may be welcomed with love, and desire, and joyful expectancy.

I know there is a feeling in every woman's heart—a feeling which goes down deeper than prejudice even—which tells her that the constant fear of offspring, and the burden of large families, are more grievous troubles than ought to be thrown upon her. She knows I am ​right in what I have been saying in these chapters, for there is a response—let her try to stifle it as she will—to every word, in her own breast. But she has been taught that she must not harbor this feeling, because she was born to be a mother, and a mother without any limit to her duties. Men have taught her this, though her own nature, while it admitted the former, has rebelled against the latter clause. This might be right, if her capabilities were also limitless. But she knows, alas! too well, that they are not, and there is where I have touched the key-note of her feelings. She is willing to do all she can, poor foolish woman; she counts the sacrifice of her strength and life as nothing, in her tireless efforts to cope with impossibilities. But when it comes to more than she can do—why, she cannot! Women have been held in strict subjection to men in this respect, partly, I think, because it was for men's interests thus to hold them—to make them believe that it was their duty to accept unlimited maternal cares, because their acceptance implied unlimited sexual gratification on the part of the men; and partly because men are as ignorant and blinded as women themselves. The women of the present day who feel the heavy drawbacks in this respect under which they are laboring, yet dare not speak one word of the bitterness and reproach which are welling up in their hearts, occupy a position exactly analogous to that of the Mormon women who feel that polygamy is wrong, yet dare not express that feeling, because they find it irreconcilable with the teachings of their religion which ordains it.

​Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker, one of the ablest and purest women of America, in a little pamphlet entitled, "Womanhood, Its Sanctities and Fidelities," treats of this very subject. I shall proceed to make a somewhat lengthy quotation from her, not only to show that I am not alone in the view I hold, but to encourage other women to come out and speak boldly the sentiments that are in their hearts:

"I think it is a perfectly fair statement of the case as between men and women the whole world over, that it is not in any great degree desire for offspring on his part that draws the husband to the wife in the close relations of married life; while on the part of the wife the love of offspring mingles largely as an impelling motive with the love of her husband; and it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that, so far in the history of our race, the unreasoning and inordinate indulgence of mimal passion on the part of the man, and affectionate submission on the part of the woman, have had more to do with the continuance of the race than paternal or maternal instinct, or consideration of any other sort whatever. That, as a general rule, women are feebly endowed with this passion, and that men are by nature and training, or by lack of it, perhaps, overstocked, will not be denied by any one who has given any thought to the subject; and those who have looked into its depths must have come to the conclusion long ago, I think, that herein lies one of the great mysteries of our being and of God's moral govern​ment. That the perpetuation of our race demanded instincts strong as death, we may allow; but why their pressure should be all on one side, so to speak, and the reciprocal impulse so feeble, in this lies the mystery; for granting to woman greater pleasure than usually comes to her by largest allowance, it is safe to say that, in nine cases out of ten, maternity, with its early pains and later cares, greatly lessens her power of enjoyment, and for the larger part of her married life she is either positively distressed by the apparently necessary demands of her husband upon her, and irresponsive to them, or kept to a cheerful response by a self-abnegation and regard for his comfort, not to say fear of his moral aberration, which is a positive drain upon her health and strength."

Again she says: "And now permit me to say that a great part of the physical and moral deterioration of the present day arises, it seems to me, from the fact that children are not conceived in the desire for them, and out of the pure lives of their fathers, as well as their mothers; and that far worse misfortunes might befall our race than decreasing families, as long as children are born to such an inheritance as too many young men of the present day are likely to transmit."

Mrs. Hooker's charge to young parents is: "You should desire children beyond all mere earthly possessions; they pay their own way, and you cannot afford to live without them; your whole life will be chilled if you wilfully shut out these sunbeams. But you must not in​vite these little ones to your homes any oftener than you can provide for them in body and in spirit, and for the health and strength of the mothers who are to bear them; and the call should come to the ear of the great Father out of pure hearts, reverently desiring his best gifts, which you promise humbly to receive and to keep for him against that day when he shall make up his jewels."

Mrs. Hooker tells us of "one New England minister, the father of many children, whose word to his daughter on her approaching marriage was 'you must instruct your husband, my dear, that he do not allow you to have children too often. If I had known what I now know earlier in life, your mother, of blessed memory, might be living to this day. The drain upon her vitality, in giving birth to all those children, and the incessant care of them through many years of poverty and trial, were more than human strength could endure ; and disease coming to her at last, she sank under it, with no power to rally.' And then he went on to state to her his deep convictions on the general subject, which were in accordance with the views I am urging, and which he had reached, not through the medium of science, but through the promptings of a great and noble heart and a courageous will, which led him to the truth at the cost of self-condemnation and a great and perpetual sorrow."

To show that there are still others whose thoughts and feelings are drifting in the same direction, I will quote a letter received by Mrs. Hooker from, she tells us, "one ​of the profoundest thinkers of the day at the head of one of our most influential secular journals:" "Your letter is capital. I think myself, and have long thought, that there is no subject more important, and as it is surrounded by difficulties, no subject which needs more discussion. I think also that a very large proportion of the ills of humanity, at the present day, comes from the long taught and incessantly repeated dogma that children come, as the rain comes, by the act of Providence; that human will has nothing to do with it, once marriage has taken place. Moreover, I hope to see the day when it will be so disgraceful for a man to have more children than he can comfortably rear or fairly start in life, as to be a drunkard or a spendthrift—even more so. I think it is swindling of an uncommonly base kind, because it is perpetrated on the helpless." This man might have added in his last sentence but one: "or than are consistent with his wife's health and wishes," and then his statement of the case would have been perfect.

But I have no right to quote all the excellencies which this little book contains. I wish every father and mother in the country could have a copy of it placed in their hands. It would remind them of so much that they ought to think about, and would give them such wise hints in regard to the training of their sons in these difficult matters. It is published by Lee & Shepard of Boston, and its cost is trifling.

"Children have a right to be born!" That is the ​ground upon which many of my opponents firmly plant themselves, and think their position is unassailable. Of course they have—a most sacred right to be born. Not even a father, in order to gratify that greatly extolled passion which rules the world, is justified in interfering with this most sacred and indubitable right, or in any way to lesson the certainty of their being born;—which is to say, that if a husband approaches his wife carnally when she is pregnant, and by his approach causes abortion, he is guilty of infanticide, or rather, fœticide. They do not mean quite this, I know, but then I do. This is going a little too far for them. But I plant myself firmly on the ground which they have deserted. After a child is, no one has a right to tamper with its existence. But, returning to the statement, and considering it in the light in which it is intended to be understood, let us decide whether it can appropriately be applied to the prevention of conception. By what possible twist of imagination can any one suppose something, which is not something at all—which is nothing, because it is nowhere, and has no existence—to be a child? A being which does not exist, has no rights, to be either granted or withheld. If it has, how about those children which numberless married couples might have had, if they had but married a few years earlier, or if the mothers had weaned their babies a few months sooner? How about the might-have-been children of those who never marry? Are there no qualms of conscience about these potential offspring? ​These children have as many rights as any other class which does not exist.

So when we talk about children having a right to be born, let us understand exactly what we mean by it. I mean that no one has a right to jeopardize a life which has already begun ever so brief an existence. Your meaning is quite another thing, and if expressed in the most direct words, would not be half so high sounding, or so complimentary to your moral nature. My meaning shuts at once and forever the door of abortion. But before that existence has commenced, we have a right—nay, it is a sacred duty, unmistakably delegated to us by God—to consider whether we shall assume the responsibility of evoking such an existence, and whether we can insure it happy conditions. Whatever be our decision, if it is made in wisdom, it is well. God will bless us. If we make a hasty and an improvident decision, misled by prejudice or passion, God will manifest his displeasure by removing our happiness and sending us affliction.

Abortion, intentionally accomplished, is criminal in the first degree, and should be regarded as murder. Yet women have been taught to look lightly on this offence, and to consider it perfectly justifiable up to the period of quickening. "The embryo has no life before that period," they will say in justification of the act. I have even heard a woman, who acknowledged to several successful abortions, accomplished by her own hands upon herself, say, "Why, there is no harm in it, any more than ​in drowning a blind kitten. It is nothing better than a kitten, before it is born." I was a young girl myself when I heard this, and I accepted the statement as a true one. Nor did I dream of questioning it, until, in later years, I became thoroughly acquainted with sexual physiology, and comprehended the wonderful economy of nature in the generation and development of the human germ.

The act of abortion which I had hitherto regarded as a trivial thing, at once became in my eyes the grossest misdemeanor—nay, the most aggravated crime. Being guided by this experience, I judge that this offence is perpetrated by women who are totally ignorant of the laws of their being. Consequently, the surest preventive against this crime will be a thorough teaching to women, even before marriage, of the physiology, hygiene, duties and obligations of maternity. Men may preach against this act as a sin; but knowing as women do, how one-sided it is possible for men to feel and talk about other matters of a similar nature, in which the sexes are equally concerned, it is not strange that these sermons produce no effect. The strangeness is still further decreased when the sermonizers are not infrequently themselves guilty of the no less heinous offence of forcing motherhood upon a woman against her will. The two offenses go together; and neither legal enactment nor social reprobation can ever divorce them. The woman knows instinctively that if her husband is justified in the one, he has no moral ​right to interfere with her in the accomplishment of the other.

But it may be well, before suggesting further remedies against this evil, to make more plain to the minds of women wherein the evil exists. Dr. Reeves, from whose address I have already quoted more than once, calls this sin a "national crime." He says: "The common effort to escape the consequences of such easy fecundity is the great crime of American women. In city and country, all over the land indeed, and among all classes, in church and out of church, this great evil is practised, and regarded as justifiable, not only to save the mother from suffering, but also to diminish the number of participants in poverty, and to insure small families and fewer cares to the rich. But alas! how frequently does the life of the mother pay the penalty of her sin! And if she does not lose her own life in the attempt, she is, to a greater or less extent, ever afterward enfeebled in health—a sufferer from prolapsus or other unhealthy symptoms, and the curse of God is upon her." After referring to the terrible consequences which follow as the result of all excesses in the marital state, the lecturer proceeded to say that "if women were half as particular in selecting pure-minded, sound-bodied husbands, as are men to find wives who are above suspicion, there would be fewer marriages, fewer premature births, and far less suffering among wives. Virtuous women should be true to themselves, and thus compel a higher standard of morals among men ​Why should the man of easy virtue be honored and welcomed to their parlors, while the poor, ruined outcast and victim of his unbridled passions is denied to rest her weary limbs even within their gates? Let women require it as a condition of respectability and good character that men shall walk upon the same virtuous level, and be as pure as they are pure."

The latter part of the above paragraph seems to have little bearing upon the subject directly under consideration, yet as the protest of a man against the loose morals of the men of the day, and against the light estimate in which this loose morality is held by professedly virtuous women, I cannot forbear giving it a place. The Doctor, at all events, has seen a direct connection between the characters of the husbands and the abortions committed by women. No doubt pure, good men would be more careful than rakes, how their wives were provoked to such deeds, by excesses on their part.

From the moment of conception, the embryo is a living thing, leading a distinct, separate existence from the mother, though closely bound to her. The mother's blood courses through its veins, and she nourishes it, and gives of her physical substance the material for its bones and muscles. From almost the earliest stage, the form of the future being is indicated, and it has its separate heart-beats, distinctly perceptible through the intervening tissues of the mother's body, which cover it. It is a human being to all intents and purposes. The period ​called quickening is merely a fictitious period, which does not indicate the first motion of the embryo. These first motions are not usually detected,—unless the woman is very observant, and knows just what feeling to expect,—until they have acquired considerable force.

Nature has put this little creature—this small man or woman, as yet all undeveloped—in a place of seeming security, and has placed every guard around it to keep it safely until the hour shall come when it is fully prepared to make a complete change in its mode of existence. If by intent or accident it is disturbed before that period, the whole of nature's plans are thwarted, and nothing is in readiness. A hundred bleeding wounds remain, when the child, with its accompanying membranes, is torn untimely from the womb of the mother: mouths that would have closed themselves at the appointed time, but now remain open to bleed away the mother's life. This is the cause of flooding so common in miscarriage, and which renders it so peculiarly dangerous. But this is only one of many dangers, which I have no space now to enumerate. The means used to accomplish the result may bring on grave disorders. If force of any kind has been employed, the womb may have been lacerated, and the foundations laid for life-long invalidism. If pills or medicines of any sort have been resorted to, the very convulsion which they occasioned in the whole body, before they found it possible to act upon the uterine system, is perhaps enough to shake the health for life. Natural parturition may have ​its perils, but unnatural parturition slays its hundreds where that slays one. Yet young married women consider miscarriage a trifling affair!

There is nothing in all the list of evils to which women are subject, which will so compromise a woman's health as a miscarriage. It may not seem to affect her, but the probabilities are she will never know a well day afterwards, even if she survives it. It is a sin against nature, for which the punishment is immediate and severe. And it is a crime in the fullest extent of the term, because it is murder, just as much as though the mother took her new-born babe and plunged a knife into its bosom, or cast it away from her, and refused to nourish it. Is there a woman not driven to the last depths of despair by wounded love and impending disgrace, who could do that to the little, soft, helpless thing, that is laid in her bosom so soon after its first cry has appealed to her heart? Yet the abortion-seeker regards with satisfaction the means to kill the little creature that has nestled so confidingly beneath her heart, as if it were the safest place in all the world for it.

But no; I must not be too hard upon these unwomanly women. Their ignorance must be held as responsible for their sins. And men must share the responsibility, too. The husband who has forced an unwelcome motherhood upon his wife, and thus provided her with what seems to her mind as an excuse for this terrible deed, must be judged equally guilty.

I have already said that knowledge among women ​will do much towards decreasing this crime. Do not be content to tell women it is wrong, and then stop there. Women are impatient of being treated like children, or like unreasoning beings; nor do they like to be dictated to. Tell them the how and the why of the whole matter, and they will discover the wrong themselves, and feel the full force of it, far more than they ever can by taking it merely on the say-so of men.

Then the laws which are already upon our statute books should be strictly enforced, not only on the occasion of bursts of indignation, when some unfortunate girl endeavors to get rid of the evidence of her shame; but whenever the fact of a wilful abortion comes to the cognizance of community. And husbands and seducers should be made to share the punishment as accessories to the crime, since if they had not enforced an undesired motherhood upon the women, there would have been no occasion for the abortion.

Not only every maker, advertiser and seller of patent medicines, warranted to "remove female obstructions," should be subjected to prosecution and punishment, but every publisher who prints an advertisement of this sort should be held equally guilty. Community will not be injured in the least by the suppression of these advertisements; for physicians of every shade of practice will sustain me in declaring that they do harm and harm only to women, no matter how innocent may be the intent of the person using them. But their real intent is for the pro​curement of abortion, and so everybody knows. If the newspapers which go into families contained nothing of this sort, nine tenths of the women who are guilty of attempts to commit abortion, would never think of it.

No; the evils attendant upon large families may be manifold; but they must not be averted by any such criminal means as this; for the remedy is as bad as the disease.

Polygamy is fortunately forbidden by law, so a man has not the opportunity, even if he had the inclination, of limiting the family of each individual wife, by supply ing himself with a plurality of wives, and through them, with the means of unlimited sexual gratification. The taking of a mistress is an expensive luxury, and is open to all and more than all the objections of polygamy. A man has no right to defraud his wife of any of the affection which is hers by prior claim. He can bring no rival near the throne, without cruel injustice to the woman he has sworn to love and cherish. So we may not hope for relief in this quarter, for the evils we encounter are worse than those we fly from.

During the writing of this book I have had it suggested to me that the St. Louis law for regulating prostitution was an excellent thing in its working, because it allowed married men to gratify their animal instincts with perfect safety among prostitutes, and thus enabled them to save their wives the burden of large families. If this is the only alternative, I think women, as a class, would prefer ​the large families. But I need do no more than sum up the arguments which I have already used against the frequenting of brothels, with the especial intent of referring to them here. We have seen how association with evil women degrades man, and places him at a disadvantage in his health, his morals, and his purse. We have seen how his wife is defrauded, and his children made to suffer. We have seen how it lends encouragement to a system whose rottenness is eating the heart out of society, and bringing moral destruction upon men and women alike. We may also feel sure that the sins a man commits against his own hearthstone will visit him at that hearthstone through some one most dear to him. Those who would levy a tax on society for immorality, must not be astonished if they are called upon to pay their share of that tax.

The suggestion to which I have referred above, is a cruel, cruel one. Bitter and cruel to women; and more terribly cruel still to men, for it would lead them blindfold to destruction.

The Rev. H. W. Marsh gives in his recently issued work, "Science and the Bible," the following definition of marriage, which exactly corresponds with the ideas I hold upon it. He says, speaking of the dual sexual nature of humanity: "The end and object of this arrangement was not only the multiplication of the species, but also the enhancement of happiness to each, by the interchange of those amiable affections, and those offices of ​sympathy and kindness which should arise from the inherent diversity of character in the sexes." He ought to have added that in a marriage wherein either of these purposes is sought to be accomplished, to the total exclusion of the other, then the great dual object of marriage is defeated. Thus, if in regarding procreation of the race as the sole object, we overlook the social, moral and intellectual comfort and happiness of the married pair, and condemn them to a life of hopeless care and suffering, the wrong is just as great to themselves and to the world as though in consulting their own pleasure they refuse to have any children at all. Indeed, if they consider their true happiness, they will not make this refusal a permanent one. But they will decide to take the matter into their own hands, instead of leaving it to blind chance; so as to secure the greatest immediate and ultimate happiness of all concerned—children as well as parents. A writer whom I have already quoted sneers at the idea of mere human foresight" being competent to judge of. the best good in respect to the size of the families, and recommends all parents to have children without limit, and trust to the Lord. I never was much of a believer in this way of managing mundane affairs. Neither were the ancients, it seems, judging by their proverb. "The gods help those who help themselves." God has endowed us with reasoning faculties and powers of judgment, and I think we are only justified in leaving consequences to him after we have done the very best that we can for our ​selves, in making the highest and fullest use of those faculties of mind he has given us.

Those would-be moralists who oppose any restriction of offspring, on what they assert to be natural and moral grounds, have, it seems to me, utterly confounded in their minds God's intent in the relations he has instituted between the sexes. God has not put woman so seemingly at the mercy of man in sexual matters, that man may feel himself justified in giving full play to his animal instincts, and compelling her to suffer the consequences. The natural attitude of the sexes towards one another has been ordained, that this very helplessness of woman may appeal to the generosity in man's nature; so that when he finds her ready to lovingly and even self-sacrificingly yield to him, he may not take advantage of and abuse her; but shall show that he can be equally unselfish and moved by considerations of affection. God has placed upon woman the burden of physical suffering; he requires from man a wise restraint of the passions for his wife's sake—a true manliness that shall raise him infinitely above the brutes. Those who would go to the beasts of the field to know what God expects and demands of the masterpiece of creation, whom he has fashioned so infinitely above them, had best get down on all-fours and grovel on the ground, that they may make their plea for bestiality perfectly consistent.

If neither abortion, polygamy, nor prostitution, opens the door of escape from undesirably large families, where ​then shall we look? Our true hope is in the better natures of men, which have not yet been called out in all their strength, because the need has never been sufficiently urged. The pressure has all been on the other side. Blind leaders have essayed to lead the blind, and together they have fallen into the ditch.

The one word which may save the race is continence. If there are any whose consciences will not let them perform the sexual act, unless the natural consequences are free to follow it, an entire continence for so long a period as it is undesirable to have children is most urgently to be recommended. Such a thing is not impossible among men. I have heard of one or two instances which raised my hope of the race, and gave me a reverent feeling towards humanity.

But this perfect abstinence is not always required, nor is it always practicable, to security immunity from undesired offspring. Let it ever be borne in mind that I would insist upon what might be considered as almost the extreme of self-denial in these matters, at the same time that I say that there are other methods, perfectly honorable, innocent, and harmless, which may be employed in the prevention of conception. Those women especially, who are bound to selfish, or at least inconsiderate husbands—husbands who are not willing to sacrifice their selfish pleasures for the well-being of their wives—will be glad to learn this. I wish there was no necessity for the knowledge of these further means. If men ​were unselfish and manly, I think the necessity would be much diminished. Then let no man who has been thus guilty, dare to blame me for extending that hope of immunity to women, which he has himself denied. desirable knowledge is within the reach of nearly every married woman; and I have an unwavering hope and belief that the time will come when it may be published openly to the world, with the full knowledge that humanity will be better, rather than worse for it.