First. It is too recent in effect, having barely reached the second generation. Second. There are more potent causes—heredity, race deterioration, and false marriage. Third. It actually produces healthy wives and mothers in the fullest sense.
There is no denial of the fact that too large a percentage of educated women,[1] as well as of the cultivated classes generally, remain unmarried. However, it has been shown in regard to the former, that "dulled instinct" is not a tenable cause. Some have attributed it more wisely to increased "nicety of choice." This may prove beneficial in the end, when man shall have become a more importunate suitor.
Women can no longer be coerced into marriage, nor will they marry from a sense of duty to humanity. But for these reasons there need be no fear that the race will perish. There is as much prospect that roses will refuse to bloom in June as that women will ever become invincible to love. This force, and this alone, can make of them light-hearted mothers in place of the weary wrecks whose perverted motherhood has been anything but a boon to humanity. As long as it is taught that motherhood oppresses woman physically and restricts her intellectually, so long the average woman may dread or rebel against it. When she studies it in all its conditioning, she finds it does not impose such a fate upon her. She learns to discriminate between the ordering of Nature and the blunders of mankind, and recognizes that normal physical development can not be antagonistic to mental growth.
If, as is known among the lower forms of life, there should be such evil fate in store for women as parthenogenesis or polyembryony, or any entire change of function or structure, it would be quite useless to rebel. Even such highly imaginary metamorphosis would not imply extinction of species. The causes of this calamity have not been fathomed by Darwin nor Weissman; and, if such disintegrating forces were at work among us, who would be wise enough to recognize them?
Study of nature leads us to believe that, if the individual be free and supplied with the means of life, there is great probability of the survival of his kind. However, we have seen that the human race decreases under artificial conditioning, and, if we are concerned lest man should become extinct, let us strive to live simply, naturally; neither separate nor antagonize the sexes; then there may be more need of Mr. Malthus than of any pessimistic prophecy on the danger of developing a woman's mind.
- ↑ Highly educated women are yet a minority among women of the so-called "cultivated classes," and are better ranked with working women, since they agree with them more nearly in habits of life.
