The Relations of the Sexes (Duffey)/Chapter 14

I HAVE NEVER yet been invited to deliver the farewell address before a graduating class of young collegiates. I am still patiently waiting and hoping for such an invitation. Meantime I have concluded that, as the invitation may never come, I will write this address out in substance, so that it may not be wholly lost to the world.

This speech, which I have been preparing for a long time—after congratulating the young men before me on the success which has attended their studies and adding all the et ceteras which it is customary to include on such an occasion—will proceed something in this wise:

Young men, I do not need to refer you to the positions of honor and emolument which await you in the world. Your own ambitions and energies will cause you to strive for these positions, while all the pressure which society puts upon you, forces you in the same direction. But, strive as you will, you cannot, in the very nature of things, all of you be presidents. Nor is it likely you will all be Members of Congress, or Judges of the Supreme Court. Even in the race for wealth some of you will be ​distanced. But there are two positions which you are all called upon to fill—called by nature, by social order, by the interests of morality, and by religion. You are all called upon to be husbands and fathers, and in these characters you may all excel, if you have not already been spendthrift of you energies, and if you do not in the future sell your birthright of domestic happiness for the mess of pottage of narrow selfishness and gross sensuality.

Probably nobody has ever before reminded you of these duties which lie before you, or told you of their importance; nevertheless, upon the manner in which you fulfil them depends not only your own happiness, but the weal or woe of countless human beings. You may owe it to the ambitious promptings of your hearts that you should succeed in politics, literature or science, or whatever course you may have marked out for yourselves; but you owe it to the human race to be sure that in the roles of husbands and fathers you make no failures—and this. consideration is of infinitely more importance than any other. By what should be counted the true success of a nation by its number of great men, or by the sum of domestic happiness within its borders, and its standard of morality? Most surely by the latter. Laws are not made for the glorification of a nation, but for the protection of its citizens, and especially of its families; and it is the happiness of these individual citizens, and these numberless families within its borders, for which government ​is directly instituted; and these families are paramount. Therefore the head of a family is of more importance than the head of a state. The one is a sovereign individual; the other is only a servant.

The man who shirks marriage is a traitor to the state, and to his race, because, for the sake of selfish considerations, he has disregarded the prudential reasons which should impel every man to marriage. In nine cases out of ten, the repudiation of marriage is a direct recognition of the brothel—the greatest curse upon society, and the nest in which are conceived and brooded nine-tenths of the misery and wretchedness and crime, which, in their full-grown proportions, stalk abroad in the world.

Bear in mind, young men, that you represent one-half of the human race:—that the other half not only owes duties to you, but that you owe duties to it, which you cannot abrogate without sin. The other, and no doubt the weaker half, is at your mercy, and appeals to your strength and your generosity. Be men, not brutes in your relations with women, and let not the appeal be vain. Let the self-sacrifice of women be matched by manly consideration, and self-denial on your part. Do not imagine woman's character is an open book which you have already conned by heart. Make up your minds to study it thoroughly and patiently. The wisest and best men in the world have not been ashamed to acknowledge that the more they studied women, the more they found in them to admire, to respect, and to reverence—and they still perceived ​depths beyond them. Do not think yourselves wiser than these men, or you will stand convicted of ignorance and self-conceit before the whole world. Be loving, be protecting, be appreciative, be kind, be considerate, and be reverent in your conduct towards women, and so shall you deserve true affection and reverence in return; and you shall thus know a measure of happiness which can never fill your lives, if you give yourselves over to selfishness and lust.

You have often heard of the importance of motherhood, with its duties and obligations. Perhaps some of you have practiced your tyro pens in reminding women old enough and wise enough to be your mothers, of these duties and obligations, when you fancied they were forgetting them. Now I dare say it never occurred to you that fatherhood carries with it equal duties and obligations, and is equally important in all its aspects. True, the mother bears and rears the child. But the father bequeaths to that child his own individual character—his excellences and weaknesses—and must care for both mother and child from the earliest moment of the latter's existence, with a wise and loving care and never-relaxing watchfulness, which can alone recompense the wife for her sufferings and risks, and which alone can secure to her the conditions and opportunities to perform in the most perfect manner the functions of motherhood.

A man cannot saturate his body with alcohol or tobacco, and not entail a curse upon his children. He ​cannot give himself over to lust, and not do them a grievous wrong. "The sins of the fathers, (not the mothers), shall be visited upon the children, even to the third and fourth generation." A husband cannot be unkind or faithless to his wife, and not run the risk of seeing his sin reflected in some undesirable or unlovely trait in his child. He cannot suffer his wife to become overburdened with labor and care, without defrauding their common offspring of the strength and vigor which are their due. They will, perhaps, wither away and die, and their deaths will surely lie at the door of his criminal neglect and unconcern. Only after leading the purest of lives, and with the most unsullied bodies, should a young man dare to accept the responsibilities of fatherhood.

I wish, young men, to speak on one more matter before I send you out into the world. Certain natural instincts are strong within you; and temptation sometimes comes in unlooked-for ways. Many a youth, who would long hesitate before entering a brothel, has fallen a victim to the temptations which meet him in social intercourse—in which the tempter is no less the tempted, and both are equally guilty, or, should I say, weak? The offence seems venial under the circumstances. But it is not so. There are four persons to whom irreparable wrong is done. First, to the young man himself. He has suffered himself to lapse from the strict line of integrity and virtue, and hereafter the road to sin will present no strong barriers, and he will soon ​probably frequent it habitually. He has taken that first step which costs, and the rest follows as a matter of course. He has done himself, not only a moral wrong, but a physical one also; as hereafter a strict adherence to virtuous conduct is all the more difficult, and natural instinct more unappeasable.

Second, the sharer in the sin is wronged past remedy. Every woman, as well as every man, is entitled to happiness in a home and family of her own. And every man and every woman are equally bound to bring unsullied bodies to the altar of hymen. He has wronged her grievously, inasmuch as now that is impossible to her as it is to him. More than this, he has probably shut her out of home and family ties altogether. Henceforth, unless circumstances are very propitious, she is destined to be an outcast, denied the fullness of earthly joys, and with sorrow, shame and misery for her portion. Going down to disease, and despair, and death, she becomes in her hatred and vengeful spirit, an ensnarer in turn, and spreads further and further the work of wretchedness he has begun. It is an awful ending to such a seemingly slight beginning. Is any one justified, no matter how great the temptation, in doing this terrible wrong to a human being? Will he be held guiltless when all earthly accounts are settled? This wrong once having been done, marriage is the only reparation possible, and will be felt obligatory upon them, by all men who have any vestige of purity or honor in their hearts.

​There is a third person injured; the man who should have been the husband of this girl. For him were her smiles and her affection. She was to have made him a happy home; but that home is now blotted out from the earth.

The fourth person who suffers from this sin, is the young man's own future wife. He may marry or he may not. Nevertheless, there is somewhere a woman who ought to be the one woman in all the world to him, and who therefore has claims upon him of the most sacred nature. He should bear, from, his earliest manhood, her image enshrined in his heart—the image of a pure, worthy woman, who will cover its face at every evil thought of his, and who will be bowed down with grief at every sinful act. This woman he will find an actual, living presence some day, and he should feel that he can only claim her purity and goodness, if he has been equally good and pure. By every sinful act, he is building a moral barrier between them, which shall endure forever; and though this pure, good woman should become his wife, they are never perfectly married.

Young men, do you comprehend this lesson? The world is before you, but the highest goal in all this world is a happy home, and he can only attain that in its fullest perfection, who strains with all his energies of soul and body to make himself worthy of it. Having done that, and filled the positions of husband and father with man-like honor and dignity, he stands higher before his ​creator than though he were crowned with laurels and bays.

I give you my blessing. Go and prove yourselves men.

In this valedictory address of mine, I have not laid as much stress upon the physiological bearings of fatherhood as I might have done; but I hesitated and forbore, lest I might shock the sensitive modesty for which collegians of all classes are so eminently remarkable, and bring the blush to the cheek of these young persons. Having dismissed them, I will now be more minute in my statements.

The infinitesimally small spermatozoa which are furnished by the semen of the male, and which unite with the female ovum, furnish important elements toward the new being, or else we should not find such strong resemblances between fathers and their offspring. The laboratory of nature for these spermatozoa is found in the testicles, which are the principal masculine organs of generation, the rest being merely accessories. The testes are composed of fine tubules convoluted or folded together. Physiologists have variously estimated the combined length of these tubules from eight thousand to fourteen thousand feet. It is possible their length varies in different individuals. Within these tubules are developed the germ-cells which, when perfected, burst and allow the escape of the spermatozoa. Under the microscope, and by whose aid alone they can be seen, these spermatozoa display a round head, with a thread-like, vertebrated ap​pendage. They keep up a constant peculiar motion, like that of the larvæ of the mosquito seen in stagnant water. In this microscopic zoosperm the father contributes himself in every particular of his being, to be united with the ovum in the formation of the new existence. If it were not that the mother possessed a modifying influence, the child would be an exact copy of the father in every respect, with every physical and mental faculty in precisely the same state they were with him at a period shortly previous to its conception. Fortunately, the mother also provides a miniature copy of herself, and the two are blended in one being, which takes on the characteristics of both; and bad tendencies are sometimes neutralized or modified by this wise provision of nature—this dual parentage.

Thus it will be seen that each parent contributes equally to the new being, and from neither alone does the life proceed. But a father's share is a most important one, and to fit himself for the privileges of parentage should be his first thought from the earliest period of budding manhood. Whatever evil creeps into his nature and remains there, will be repeated in the child which he would wish to see better than himself. Whatever physical sins he is guilty of, will result in physical degeneracy of his offspring. Children are the monuments which a man builds to himself, and which proclaim most truly to the world his exact character. Whatever his children are, that he has made them through ​himself. It is not sufficient that a man secure a pure mother for them. It is necessary that both streams be equally pure, or else the united waters will become tinged like the Mississippi after it becomes fairly amalgamated with the muddy current of the Missouri.

But have I no words to say to women? Oh, so many! They crowd upon me, and I am almost dumb from very fullness of desire for utterance. At the first woman's congress held in New York, Mrs. Caroline F. Corbin, in her address on "Enlightened Motherhood," made the following significant statement:

"I wish to call attention to one singular fact that woman has succeeded better at everything else to which she has ever turned her hand, than at her grand, fundamental function of motherhood. The growing experience of every-day life tends constantly to prove that in art, literature, science, trade, commerce, manufactures, woman lacks no essential element of success. It is as a mother that she halts and falls behind the forward ranks. Elizabeth Barrett Browning said,

"Perhaps when human nature is scientifically analyzed, it may be found that from a stunted, dwarfed, imperfect womanhood, not even a perfect housekeeper can be obtained. But if neither artist nor housekeeper can be developed, how much less that crowning functionary of civilized society—a mother!"

​If, therefore, the world would seek for a perfect motherhood, it must first expect perfect womanhood. There must be no dwarfing or stunting of either physical or mental growth. The intellect must not be compressed, so that the affectional and domestic, shall be exaggeratingly developed. Women must be individualized, and emancipated from servile conditions. It is not fit that the mothers and rulers of men should be themselves slaves.

As men and women sit down to the same table, and eat the same food, which they afterwards assimilate to meet their individual needs, so the same opportunity for development in the world should be afforded them, the same mental and moral food placed before them; and the natures of each will accept and assimilate according to their especial requirements. When the world shall learn to educate and train up its daughters as human beings, rather than as mothers, or, more properly speaking, "females," then we may hope to really find women, as the result of this education and training; and having "perfect women nobly planned," we may confidently expect a wiser and more perfect motherhood. There is no knowledge which is good for the one sex, which is not equally good for the other; for the affairs of men and women are so inextricably blended, that what directly concerns the one, concerns the other, at least indirectly. They are each parts of the great whole of humanity, and if one part is imperfect, it will not properly match the other.

​We want women for mothers, not young girls just from the schoolroom, with perhaps not so much knowledge of the duties of wifehood and motherhood as they have of the differential calculus. Marriage seems to these young girls the golden dawn of an interminable play-day, where duties there are none, and trouble never comes. Offspring are never thought of. Let these flighty creatures marry, if they must and will, but let the mischief stop here. These children are ignorant enough and remiss enough as wives; how dare they become mothers? Let them wait until years have sobered them down, and taught them something of the solemnity of life and its duties; and until they feel a yearning in their breasts for little ones, and are ready to accept the trust with humble, grateful hearts, realizing all the obligations to which they pledge themselves. Motherhood is an awful thing to thrust upon a woman unprepared! It means so much; and if its obligations are neglected through any cause whatever, a great weight of wretchedness and misery is cast into the stream of time, the ripples from which will spread out in constantly widening circles, until they touch the shores of eternity!

Young women are reminded so frequently that they are to be mothers, that one would naturally expect to see them submitted to a course of training or education having this particular end in view. Perhaps a general education is after all the best, because it fosters a general growth and development. But, with this general ​education, it seems to me, there should go some special teaching concerning special womanly matters. In the matter of health the girl should be taught not only her duties to herself, but to her probable children. She should be told that she owes it as a duty to the race, to in no wise allow her body to fall into unhealthful conditions, through a devotion to fashion or social dissipation.

Wherein, in reality, differs the dissipation of young men, with their drinking, their tobacco-using, and their brothel-frequenting; and the fashionable dissipation of young women, with their late hours, their dancing, their unhealthful food, their stimulus of theatre, and party-going, and sensual novel-reading, and their suicidal modes of dress? Let us compare the results of the two and see if there is any noticeable difference.

The young man, by excesses of various sorts, breaks down his health, shatters his nerves, clouds his brain, wastes his money, degrades himself morally, becomes less than a man, and is not capable of an appreciation of true womanhood. He renders himself unfit to be a husband and father; for he brings sorrow to his wife, and weakness and perhaps disease to his children. It is a terribly sad picture, and in its depths is found the greatest misery the world contains.

But what is there brighter in the other picture? A woman, by a course of fashionable dissipation, unfits herself in every way for the serious duties of life. By her late hours, and exciting and exhausting amusements, ​she breaks down her nervous system, and lays the sure foundation for future irritability and invalidism. Her unwholesome food makes her in time a confirmed dyspeptic. Her extravagance will be the curse of her married life. Her dress compresses the organs of the body, and deforms her to such a degree that disease is the inevitable result, and motherhood, when it comes, a torture. The stimulating sensational mental diet furnished in such books as the novels of Ouida, Rhoda Broughton, and others of a like class, excites into premature development the instincts which are intended to be held in abeyance for a certain period. The effect upon her mind by this sensational, sensual course of reading, is such that it interferes with, and mars her social intercourse with the other sex, and renders her incapable of cool judgment regarding them. Marriage seems to her a holiday, given over to amusement and sensual delights; and when she finds neither to any great degree in it, she is discontented and disgusted. It is not at all unlikely she finds her way out of its bonds by legitimate or illegitimate means. As a wife, she becomes an incumbrance to a man, and drags him down morally and intellectually, instead of leading him up to greater heights. As a mother, she begets sickly children, whom she is obliged to hand over to the care of nurses; and before middle life, she retires to the quarters of an invalid, prematurely aged. Her brains are not much hurt by this persistently wrong course, for the good reason that she has none to hurt.

​Is there, then, any great difference in its results between the dissipation of the two sexes? The victims of both ought to be prohibited by law from perpetuating their kind. And a woman ought to be as ashamed of leading a so called "fashionable” life, as a man of a "fast" one. They are in truth travelling the same road, side by side, and will reach physical and moral destruction together.

The mother of the future must be the calm, strong, motherly woman, perfect in physical development, and with a clear, well-balanced mind, capable not only of guiding, but governing. She must know life in all its phases, and be able to distinguish evil from good. She must be a woman whom her husband will respect, and her sons revere; whom the latter will regard to the latest days of their life as the perfection of womanhood, and the model they would wish their wives to imitate—a woman capable of bearing and rearing children, and moulding the characters of men and women.

I wish to make extracts from Hufeland's "Art of Prolonging Life" on important points concerning the perfect development of offspring. The first of these relates to the state of health of parents. He says: "We are a copy of our parents, not merely in regard to the common form and texture, but in respect to particular weakness and faults of single parts. A foundation even for diseases which have their root in our structure and constitution, may be thus communicated. I am convinced, above all, that great weakening of the constitution by early ex​cesses, communicates to children a peculiar weakness of the glandular and lymphatic system, which ends in the scrofula, as it is called; and causes this disease to appear in the first months of life, or even at the very birth. The too youthful or too great age of parents is likewise prejudicial to the strength and vital duration of the children."

Hufeland says in regard to the period of pregnancy: "The future constitution, the proper substance of the child, must principally assume the character of that being of whom it makes so long a part, and of whose flesh and blood it is actually composed. Besides, not only the constitution of the mother, but also other favorable or unfavorable causes, during the time of pregnancy, must have a great influence on the whole formation and the life of the being. This is confirmed by experience. The child's state of health, and the greater or less strength of its constitution, are determined in a particular manner much more according to the condition of the mother than that of the father. By a weakly father a robust child can always be provided—produced, provided the mother have a sound and vigorous body. The substance of the father is, as it were, in her ennobled. On the other hand, the strongest man will never obtain a lively, healthy child from a mother who is weak and sickly. . . So much have mankind been at all times impressed with the importance of this period, that among ancient nations a pregnant woman was considered as a person sacred and ​secure from injury, and that every one who hurt or illtreated her was thought deserving of double punishment. Our age, unfortunately, has here made a difference, both in a physical and political view. The weak-nerved, sensitive, and delicate constitution of the female sex, at present, renders the preservation of the fruit in the mother's womb much more uncertain and dangerous. The womb of the mother is no longer a place of safety, the undisturbed atalier of nature through that unnatural sensibility which is now so peculiar to a great part of our women, they have become far more susceptible of a thousand prejudicial effects, a multitude of passions; and the fruit suffers by every mental affection, every alarm, every cause of disease, and even by the most trifling accident. It is, therefore, impossible that a child, in a place where its formation and expansion are every moment interrupted and disturbed, should acquire that degree of perfection and strength to which it was destined. . . Little attention do mankind pay, either in a civil or political point of view, to the importance of this condition. Who thinks, at present, of the sacredness of a pregnant woman; or who regulate their behavior to her by reflecting that the life, or at any rate the physical and moral formation of a future being may be thereby endangered?"

Hufeland adds: "Man in general should have respect for a pregnant woman in this point of view; and as the depository of a human being during its state of formation, treat her with every care, tenderness and attention ​Every husband in particular, ought to make this his duty; and to reflect that he thereby watches over the life and health of his offspring, and deserves, in the fullest sense, the title of father."

There is a self-styled science, taking to itself the name of stirpiculture, which, at the present day, is attracting attention among a certain class of people, who repeat the declarations of eminent scientists in support of their opinions. These stirpiculturists quote the successful experiments of stock breeders, to prove that the same measures should be adopted for the improvement of the human race. They propose to breed from all women, in order to secure quantity of offspring, but from only the best specimens of men, to secure quality. This is a doctrine singularly repugnant to one's feelings. I can hardly help feeling that our respect and veneration for the most noble specimens of manhood would receive a severe blow, if we were forced to regard them as the mere stud-horses of humanity. Nevertheless, their arguments possess a certain plausibility, which is perplexing to one who has not given the subject his closest attention. But the whole mistake comes, as do so many other mistakes in these sexual matters, in regarding men as on the same plane with the lower animals. Men, however, are not brutes, except as they make themselves such, by encouraging a preponderance of their brutal natures.

If all that is desired in men were the same traits ​that we require in animals, this stirpiculture theory would be without a flaw. If we only wanted perfect physiques, with certain turns of the form and tricks of the features, we might proceed on scientific principles to breed for the traits we desired. As a pigeon-breeder said he would produce any given feather in three years, but it took him six to obtain a head and beak; so, perhaps, we might in three generations obtain any desired complexion, and in six the form and features we required. But these are not, after all, the most important things about the human race. Humanity is a complex affair. It possesses faculties which the brutes do not; and it has interests at stake which do not enter into the calculations of the breeder of the lower order of animals. A man perfect physically, may be very deficient mentally, and still more so morally; while our intellectual giants do not always resemble Hercules or Apollo. If the world had always been regulated on the stirpiculturist's plan, some of the brightest geniuses it has ever known would never have been permitted existence. It is plain to be seen, therefore, that no uniform plan can be adopted which will perfect the human race. Any such plan would reduce all individuals to a uniform state of mental mediocrity; for genius is in itself a kind of abnormal development in some particular direction, which would be discouraged and prevented by a careful system of breeding. Moreover, the simple rules which govern the breeders of animals could not be forced to apply in any degree to ​humanity, because of the greater number of things to be taken into consideration.

Besides, who is to do this breeding? The animals do not attend to this themselves. It is managed by the superior intelligence of a higher race, and it is managed solely for the advantage of that higher race. Where is the higher race which is to mould us for its own selfish purposes? We evidently cannot undertake it for ourselves, because it is impossible that we should be sufficiently unprejudiced, disinterested and clear-sighted, to decide with perfectly unbiassed judgment in a matter in which we had so much at stake, and against which our interests and affections would so often combine. We could not trust the matter in the hands of a few, because that would at once create an aristocracy; and we are all too nearly on a level for us to allow a portion to usurp over the rest powers which might be abused, and which, by placing the one party in the very position of stock-breeders, and the other party in the position of stock to be bred, would naturally and inevitably lead to the adoption of the same selfish motives in the former, and cause the mass of humanity to be regarded in the light of creatures to be moulded to suit the wishes and purposes of the few. Or, suppose it was possible to conduct stirpiculture on the democratic plan, and all had an equal voice in the management of affairs, it would take generations to produce any evident effect; and meantime each successive generation might alter its ideal of human perfection, and ​accordingly vary the general plan; and so nothing would be accomplished after all.

If we are really desirous of profiting by the example of cattle and poultry breeders, we must kill all weakly and unpromising children. And if we carry this thing out to its fullest perfection, we will find ourselves justifying the Spartans, who, it is said, when they desired children, were permitted to commit a rape on any woman they wished, in the belief that the fruit of this violent union would be more strong and vigorous than that of a willing one.

This proposal to perfect the race pays an utter disregard to the social happiness of mankind. Homes and families there will be none, unless we make ourselves into one universal family, in which each is married to all, as in the Oneida community—which God forbid!

There is one possible and even practical measure which might be adopted for the improvement of the human race, though I stand in no expectation of seeing the present age adopt the suggestion—something which would violate no rule of morality, and would be a positive moral benefit, because it would prove an incentive to both men and women, to make themselves fit for the duties and privileges of parenthood. When a man and woman are about to marry, let them each present themselves for examination in regard to health to a competent physician, who should decide whether they are proper candidates for parentage. If he finds them to be so, let him issue to each a license, permitting them to have offspring at their ​pleasure. If the decision is unfavorable, let the license be refused, and they should be forbidden under severe penalties from perpetuating the race. Impossibility for either party to obtain a license should be considered sufficient grounds for a non-fulfilment of the marriage contract. I repeat I do not expect this to be adopted, but it has the essence of efficiency and practicality in it, nevertheless, and is no more arbitrary in its rulings than are some of the regulations of Prussia regarding marriages.

Speaking of stirpiculture, it is natural to turn to the possibility of producing the sexes at will. There are various theories in regard to this matter. One is, that when the germ-cells proceed from the right ovary and testicle of the woman and man, the offspring will be a male; if from the left of both, a female. The upholders of this theory do not tell us what the product is likely to be, when they proceed one from the right of one party, to the conjugal union, and the other from the left of the other. Moreover it has been discovered, to the utter refutation of this theory, that men and women who had been deprived by accident or disease of one testicle or ovary, have begotten or given birth to children of both sexes.

Stock-breeders have discovered certain principles which regulate them in the breeding of cattle and poultry, one of which is that an early union after the period of "heat," in the animal, is usually productive of a female, a late one of a male. The early eggs of a hen are, I ​believe, likewise held to produce pullets, the later ones cocks.

The most important test which this matter of sex has received has been at the hands of Mrs. Mary Treat, of Vineland This lady, who is one of the most thorough botanists and entomologists in the country, devoted a portion of the summer of 1872 to experiments with the larvae of certain butterflies, the results of which she gave in the March number of the American Naturalist for 1873. She says in this article:

"Two years ago this past summer, I was feeding a few larvæ of papilio asterias for the cabinet, when one of my specimens wandered from its food, and rested upon a book to undergo its transformations. Not feeling inclined to give up the book for this purpose, I placed the larvæ on a fresh stem of caraway. Upon removing it from the book, I found its feet were entangled in silk, and that it was in position for a chrysalis, but not yet fastened; so I was surprised to see it commence eating. It continued eating for some days longer, before changing to a chrysalis. I then tried others in the same way, and also took off quite a number of larvæ, shutting them away from food. Some of the larvæ that I deprived of food in this first experiment died, but all that completed their transformations were males; while those that I induced to go on feeding by tempting them with the best and freshest food proved to be females."

This accidental discovery led to experiments on a ​larger scale a summer or two later, in conducting which she fed a portion of her larvæ sparingly, and shut them in a box, which she labelled "male." "Thirty-four males came from my male boxes, and then a rather small female made its appearance. Out of seventy-nine specimens that I labelled males, three females were produced. On the other hand, those that I fed up, keeping them on a good supply of fresh food, I labelled "females," and placed them in separate boxes. Out of these boxes sixty-eight females came and four males."

Not satisfied with this experiment, she made still another, which she relates as follows: "Soon after the last moult, I took twenty larvæ and shut them away from food for twenty-four hours. At the end of that time I replaced ten on a good supply of food, watched them carefully, and kept them eating until they attained a large size. They became chrysalides within a few hours of each other, and emerged as butterflies eight days after. One of these chrysalides was accidentally crushed; the remaining nine were females. Of the starved ones, eight males came out; the remaining two chrysalides died."

A third and a fourth and a fifth time she experimented with the same attendant results. In every case nearly every well-fed larva produced a female, and nearly every sparingly-fed larva a male. Mrs. Treat draws her conclusions in the following manner: "It would seem then, as the result of the whole experiment, that sex is not determined in the egg of insects, and that the female ​requires more nourishment than the male. Nor does this appear strange, when we consider the reproductive nature of the female. It has frequently been said to me, 'If your theory is true, it makes the female higher in the scale—superior to the male.' I believe it has always been admitted that the female gives birth to the young. If this is considered superiority, then the female is superior; but if beauty of form and color is taken into account, then the male insect is superior, the same as with birds and the higher animals."

The same principle is discovered in plants which are hermaphrodite in their nature—an excess of vitality producing female shoots, and a lack of it male. But how to apply this principle to the human race is difficult to determine. The time may possibly come when it will be done. But for the past, during which females have been held in such low esteem, perhaps it has been as well that it was not understood, or the world would have shown a superfluity of males. When the value of the sexes is held more equal in the minds of humanity, then, perhaps, mankind will obtain that knowledge which shall permit them with certainty to regulate the production of the sexes at will. In regard to the matter, I can only repeat what I have said in a former work: "Now is it not safe to infer that, as nature requires the most vigorous and favorable conditions for the propagation of female plants and animals, she will pursue the same course in regard to the human race? As a result of this inference, may we not believe ​that the sexes result from special conditions rather than from special times? Not only does the female sex require superior vigor and vitality, in order to sustain the heavier physical burdens which are laid upon it; but that it does possess this superior vigor and vitality is clearly proven by statistics, which show that while there are more male children born,—in proportion of about one hundred and six male to one hundred female,—so more of the male' sex succumb to disease during infancy. Therefore, when age, health, moral habits, and temperance in the marital relations combine—or when there is a sufficient number of these to make a favorable balance—the children of the parents possessing this combination will be predominately daughters. When, from any lack of these advantages, there is an adverse balance, sons may be expected. I offer my theory for what it is worth, believing that it is at least deserving of consideration.

My chapter and my book are nearly finished. But why have I written all this? Yes; I hear your reproaches my sisters. I know how utterly helpless you are, and I lay down my pen in very weariness and disheartedness. I could cry out in utter desolation of spirit, it all seems ⟨so⟩ hopeless. It is cruel, cruel to tell women these things—to open their eyes to the truth, and thus saddle them with greater responsibilities than they now feel, only to bring them increased wretchedness, and do no good. A ​woman cannot walk the path of maternity alone. She must have the help of a loving and sustaining hand. God never intended to make the unequal burdens between the sexes which man has done. It is for woman to endure and to bear. But it is for man to go with her step by step along the weary road, and share every pain and every care with her. It is for him to be self-denying and patient; to be kind and considerate to her, and brave for her. To cheer her sinking courage, to relieve her of care, and to use his every effort and endeavor to mitigate her sufferings. What are the demands of business and the thoughts of self at such a time? To the true husband they should be only secondary. Two lives are in the balance; one to be directed for good or ill to all eternity; the other to be made or marred for the balance of time.

A woman is not strong of herself at these times. It is not intended that she should be. She is given a strong arm to lean upon, and cursed may it be if it fail her now! Sister women, do you find this arm surrounding you, and warding off every trouble and care? I read a sad story in your pale, worn faces, and in your listless lives—and unblessed maternity.

Yet maternity should be the crown of a woman's life, not only in its results, but from its very earliest moment. It should be for her such a season for happiness and hopefulness, for the outpouring to her of affection, and of freedom from care—such a season for personal delights, ​not to be indulged in selfishly, but for the sake of the little life whom the happiness of the mother will bless, or her unhappiness and despondency and care mar, that each recurring period will be bright spots in her life.

There is no crueller doctrine than that so frequently taught of the self-abnegation of women. Mothers cannot afford to forget or neglect themselves, for they are the heart and the sinew and life of the family. They must be healthy, happy, restful and free from care at all times, if the home is to be a pleasant one; but during pregnancy it is their sacred duty to make self the unselfish consideration of their lives. Herbert Spencer speaks thus wisely of the doctrine of self-sacrifice:

"If he had the courage to think out clearly what he vaguely discerns, he would discover that self-sacrifice passing a certain limit entails evil on all—evil on those for whom sacrifice is made, as well as on those who make it. While a continual giving-up of pleasures and continual submission to pains is physically injurious, so that its final outcome is debility, disease, and abridgement of life; the continual acceptance of benefits at the expense of a fellow-being is morally injurious. Just as much as unselfishness is cultivated by the one, selfishness is cultivated by the other. If to surrender a gratification to another is noble, readiness to accept the gratification so surrendered is ignoble ! And if repetition of the one kind of act is elevating, repetition of the other kind of act is degrading. So that though up to a certain point altruistic action blesses giver ​and receiver, beyond that point it curses giver and receiver—physically deteriorates the one, and morally deteriorates the other. Every one can remember cases where greediness for pleasures, reluctance to take trouble, and utter disregard of those around, have been perpetually increased by unmeasured and ever-ready kindnesses; while the unwise benefactor has shown by languid movements and pale face the debility consequent on disregard of self: the outcome of the policy being destruction of the worthy in making worse the unworthy.

"The absurdity of unqualified altruism becomes, indeed, glaring on remembering that it can be extensively practiced only if in the same society there coexist one moiety altruistic and one moiety egotistic. Only those who are intensely selfish will allow their fellows habitually to behave to them with extreme unselfishness. If all are duly regardful of others, there are none to accept the sacrifices which others are ready to make. If a high degree of sympathy characterizes all, no one can be so unsympathetic as to let another receive positive or negative injury that he may benefit. So that pure altruism in a society implies a nature which makes pure altruism impossible, from the absence of those towards whom it may be exercised."

Will my readers think this matter over on every side; and when they next read a story in which the writer attempts to give his conception of the most womanly character, and in so doing makes his heroine a woman of the self-denying type, and her husband a drunken blackguard, let ​them remember that to develope this kind of a woman, the man must either at first be bad, or else her altruistic treatment of him will soon make him so. No; a perfect womanhood is not matched by an imperfect manhood; and the kind of a womanly character which neglectful and dissipated men develope, is not the highest type after all—it is one to be discouraged to the utmost.

A mother cannot afford to overlook, forget and neglect herself during her prospective motherhood; and a father who allows her to do so, has neglected the first and most imperative duties of his fatherhood, and committed a crime, for the terrible and far-reaching results of which he shall be held accountable before a higher tribunal than that of man.

Husband and wife should co-operate in this occasion of such solemn importance to them both. Only the willingness to so forget self and give his whole thoughts and energies towards the perfection of the human being which his act invokes, and to lighten the cares and pains which he thus lays upon its mother, can justify a man in the solemnly important act of creation. A woman with a husband who realizes all this, and strives to the utmost of his endeavor to do his duty towards her and towards their future child, is truly blessed among women, and blessed through her blessedness, is the fruit of her womb.