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THE CONQUEST OF DEATH 
 
 BY 
 
 ABBOT KINNEY 
 
 AUTHOR OF "tasks BY TWILIGHT," ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 1893 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1893 
 BY 
 
 ABBOT KINNEY 
 
 7 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 Introduction v 
 
 I.-^EX I 
 
 II. — Marriage 6i 
 
 III. — Husband Choice 105 
 
 IV. — Wife Choice .119 
 
 V. — The Child 150 
 
 VI. — Hints to the Husband . . . . . .212 
 
 VII. — A Word to the Wife 231 
 
 VIII.— ReIvIGion 241 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 NBARI^Y twenty years ago the fact was brought to my atten- 
 tion that two of the sovereign States of our Union had lost 
 population between the years i860 and 1870. These States 
 were Maine and New Hampshire. The loss in one case was over 
 six thousand persons, and in the other over sixteen thousand. This 
 loss occurred in the face of a considerable immigration from Canada, 
 Ireland, etc. It occurred in two of our most intelligent communities. 
 The two States named have indeed increased in population during 
 the last census, but only as to their cities. The rural population has 
 fallen oflf four per cent, in Maine, and in Vermont there is in the 
 whole State an absolute loss of some four hundred inhabitants. 
 Similar conditions now appear in the West. Thirty-two counties of 
 Illinois, for instance, show a large absolute decrease of population. 
 
 This may not seem alarming without further knowledge of the 
 conditions existing among us. When, however, we see items like 
 the following taken from serious publications : 
 
 Instruction in Abortion. — The Medical and Surgical Reporter says that it 
 has received a pamphlet which is evidently being widely distributed. This 
 pamphlet offers for sale a translation of a book by Velpeau, in which instruc- 
 tions may be found how to produce abortion in a variety of ways, some of 
 which are *' not known to the medical world," and also "valuable hints as to 
 the best means by which evasion of the law can be accomplished when a 
 physician is so unfortunate as to be * suspected ' of having been guilty of the 
 step." — Dec. 27, 1890. 
 
 The Prevention of Conception. — The Detroit Medical and lyiterary Associa- 
 tion recently discussed the question as to the justifiability of preventing con- 
 ception. Almost every speaker contended that the practice was proper and 
 right, and many said that prevention could be accomplished mechanically 
 without injury to either the man or the woman. There were apparently but 
 few members of the society who opposed this view, or at any rate there were 
 but few who expressed their opposition. — Med. Record, Nov. 29, 1890, 
 
 When we see in every daily paper advertisements of nostrums to 
 bring on the menses, or in other words cause abortion, and when we 
 see in our own acquaintance the few children to a marriage or those 
 totally sterile, we may well conclude that American breeding is not, 
 as a rule, done by its intelligent and dominant families. A physician 
 
vi Introduction. 
 
 of fair practice in a popular summer resort informs me that in the 
 treatment of women for the sequelae of recent abortions, these cases 
 bear the ratio to conceptions going to term of six to seven. Six abor- 
 tions to seven births is a condition worth looking into. Reflecting 
 further that many abortions are likely never to be mentioned, that 
 prevention of conception is widespread, and that our labor is recruited 
 from immigration, a judicious person cannot but feel that some 
 slight increase of these tendencies will result in an extinction of the 
 old American stock. 
 
 In France and Greece the population, independent of immigration, 
 is slowly decreasing. Our last census shows that we have come to a 
 similar condition. This condition may best be seen by the following 
 
 table : 
 
 Increase of population. Increase from births. 
 
 1870 to 1880 11,598,000 8,891,000 
 
 1880 to 1890 12,225,000 6,950,000 
 
 There were consequently 2,941,000 less births in the last decade 
 than in the first, and this, too, in a population twenty -five per cent, 
 larger in the last decade. Had the birth-rate been the same in the 
 two decades we should have had an increase of over 10,000,000 by 
 births instead of the 6,950,000 actually noted. 
 
 The loss of population in a State like Nevada or in the mining 
 counties of California may doubtless be justly attributable to emigra- 
 tion owing to resource-failure, but such a cause can not be properly 
 credited in the face of a large immigration as in New England. 
 
 In a wagon trip through New England in 1877, I found many 
 farms being worked by the Irish, whole districts in manufacturing 
 towns inhabited by French Canadians, with French signs on the 
 streets, stores, and houses. I found the Catholic religion dominant, 
 where a few years before it was not to be found. Children bom of 
 the old American stock were rare, while those of foreign parentage 
 were numerous. 
 
 I made it a point to call on a physician or druggist in every 
 village I visited, and to ask about the conditions of marriage, child- 
 birth, etc. The result of these inquiries was a unanimous testimony 
 that American men and women of the old stock not only no longer 
 cared for large families, but that they very frequently took means to 
 prevent having them. Both acts to prevent conception and to cause 
 abortion in case of conception were stated as general in every 
 village visited. 
 
 The impression confirmed in many cases by statistics was that 
 a large majority of the rural communities in New England had a 
 birth-rate too low to replace the losses in the native stock by death. 
 
Introduction, vii 
 
 The rarity of full-blooded American children, compared to those 
 of foreign parentage in these communities, was striking. I was not 
 surprised later to see such figures as those of Holyoke in Massachu- 
 setts. In this old American town of 6,297 minors, but 843 were of 
 American parentage. The birth-rate, in all cases, amongst what we 
 call the native population was decreasing, the marriage rate was 
 about stationary, but the divorce rate and the death-rate were both 
 increasing. 
 
 In general conversation, those of the old American stock seemed 
 nearly unanimous in expressing disregard, distaste, or positive oppo- 
 sition to procreation. They made no bones about it. From the 
 preacher to the prostitute, infants were intruders. Progeny was 
 prevented, destroyed, occasionally endured, rarely sought or wel- 
 comed. The works of Allen, Clark, etc., gave some years ago the 
 alarming figures as to the vital movement of our native population 
 now familiar to political economists. In Western trips, I found the 
 same conditions fatal to the family growth. In San Francisco, for 
 instance, the last school census shows a shortage in the number of 
 children to be expected in the total population, upon calculation 
 found correct in general practice. 
 
 This shortage reached the large total of 14,000 children. The 
 papers on the publication of this fact cried out ''Where are our 
 children ? ' ' For a moment there was a ripple in the current, a 
 splash of protest, and on the people whirl to destiny. 
 
 The testimony is uniform that this shortage of children in San 
 Francisco, as in other places, is nearly all due to the absence of 
 progeny in American families. The families of the foreign-bom 
 seem to average up to the standard. When we consider that about 
 one third of the San Francisco population is of foreign birth, we can 
 perceive some other relation of the figures in that census that is still 
 more alarming for the American family. With a continuance of the 
 practices leading to no children or small families, it cannot be long 
 before the original settler stock will be gone. Their intelUgence, 
 self-reliance, capacity for a liberal .form of self-government, their 
 religion, and perhaps their language will go with them. 
 
 It is only proper to state in connection with the child shortage in 
 San Francisco that it has been at- least in part attributed to a former 
 dishonest census. The fact remains, however, that the proportion 
 of children in the well-to-do American families is far below the 
 normal. Now we hear that in the last five years there have been 
 in San Francisco 21,000 deaths and only 8,000 births. It is again 
 proper to state that the record of deaths is substantially correct, 
 while it is certain that the birth record is incomplete and unreliable. 
 
viii Introduction, 
 
 I have not even taken the trouble to verify the figures, so little con- 
 fidence would I place in any vital statistics from San Francisco. 
 
 We may touch casually on the growing lateness of marriage and 
 the increased proportion of those who never marry, and then take up 
 the extraordinary increase of divorce. One curious investigator 
 states that in a period when there were 23,000 divorces in the United 
 States, there were 21,000 throughout the rest of the world. In 
 divorce, America comes first, with all other coimtries combined a 
 poor second — 
 
 Se non ^ vero, h ben trovato. 
 
 But while many of the records are incomplete and unreliable as to 
 close details they are not so as to the general drift of society. What 
 the records stammer out and what we have in official whispers has 
 open confirmation in our social environment. Houses or rooms to 
 let to families — without children, — and families — without children — 
 advertising this advantage when seeking houses or apartments, adver- 
 tisements of sure cures for suppressed menstruation ' ' from whatever 
 cause," appear every day in city newspapers. Married and single 
 women are equally notified in open newspaper advertisements that 
 conception — the new-lighted life in the uterus — can be painlessly, 
 certainly, and safely done away with. Every such notice is a lie, 
 but that does not matter as to the picture of wants it shows to exist. 
 A physician friend with a large general practice tells me that in 
 his time he has noticed, not a diminished desire for children only 
 amongst American women, but a marked decline in their child-bearing 
 capacity. His experience only goes back eighteen years. 
 
 For some twenty years, fact after fact has forced upon me the 
 reluctantly received opinion that the present vital movement in our 
 population can only eventuate in the elimination of the old American 
 stock through non-reproduction. It is impossible to disguise the 
 fact that in many places the population is maintained or increased 
 by immigration, or by the children of recent immigrants. The 
 fidelity of these to the duties of marriage and to procreation is largely 
 due not to the reason but to useful superstition. Intellectual inquiry 
 invites infidelity. Skepticism has no soul, nor has it breeding power. 
 Man must have a belief to be in earnest. The skeptics disappear, 
 the superstitious survive, but progress cannot live without intellec- 
 tual activit3^ This is incompatible with the infallibility demanded 
 for the integrity of superstition. So long as there is progress, there 
 must be intellectual independence. Here then is the dilemna — 
 SKEPTICISM and STERiiyiTv, or superstition and stagnation. Pro- 
 gress to extermination, or perpetuation of life without improvement. 
 
Introduction. ix 
 
 This problem and others kindred to it are those for which I have 
 sought a solution. This work was prepared for my children. 
 Interest in my race and country induces me to make it public, with 
 the exception of one chapter. I have, indeed, little hope of stem- 
 ming the tide to the extremes of extermination or superstition now 
 running in the public. There is, however, ground to expect that the 
 grand motive of immortality of the body instilled into children may 
 become a material and practical religion securing reproduction, while 
 not subject to the periodic overthrow of systems based on the 
 undemonstrable dogmas of revelation. 
 
 My religion of reproduction has no fight to make with those 
 religions derived from revelation. It can live with or without them. 
 Many hypotheses and doctrines are mentioned in this volume ; much 
 advice is given. Some views of men are attacked, some defended. 
 Doubtless, there is plenty of error scattered through the book. All 
 these things are intended to be nothing but the plain truth. Many 
 of them are, perhaps, the correct course for man to-day, while in the 
 future, if persisted in, they might bring ruin. What is truth to-day 
 may be error to-morrow. 
 
 These various views are written merely to attract attention and 
 secure interest in the object I have in view. 
 
 They are all second and servant to the main motive of the work. 
 This is the necessity of reproduction in man to enter any demon- 
 strable future. 
 
 Abbot Kinnky. 
 
;^ 
 
 THE CONQUEST OF DEATH 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 SEX. 
 
 HUMAN beings are divided into two sexes, male and female. 
 The difference between the two sexes is considerable, reaching 
 its maximum in the period of greatest vitality and being least marked 
 in youth and old age. Even before birth it can be recognized by the 
 heart beats. Those of the female foetus average 144 in the minute, 
 and rarely fall below 135. Those of the male foetus average 120 in 
 the minute and very rarely go above 130. The heart beats continue 
 more frequent and more variable throughout life in the female than 
 in the male. 
 
 At birth and as the growth proceeds, the differences of the sexes 
 remain well defined, and at the age of puberty and fertility increase. 
 
 In the new-born babe, milk is sometimes found in the breast. 
 Speaking comparatively, this is frequent in the male child and rare 
 in the female. (Recent researches indicate little if any difference 
 between the sexes in this particular. — Variot.) 
 
 The mammary gland or breast develops in the female into a 
 capacity for secreting milk at the age of puberty. After childbirth 
 it performs this function common to the females of all mammals. 
 This milk is the food designed by nature for the infant. Excep- 
 tional cases of the secretion of milk by the female without childbirth 
 and after the menopause have been recorded. The secretion of milk 
 by the generally rudimentary mammary gland of the male have 
 been authenticated in a few instances. This may be accounted for 
 on the ground that the male, being the last feature of evolution, 
 must pass through the female type. Another similar indication of 
 this is the minute rudimentary uterus in the male. 
 
 The external organs of generation in both sexes show the same 
 development in the foetus, up to the time of their permanent form in 
 the female. The male organs continue to develop beyond this point. 
 For the detail of this change and the parts in the female which cor- 
 
2 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 respond to those in the male, or rather from which these grow, see 
 American System of Obstetrics, Hirst, vol. i., pp. 199 and 200. 
 
 The male babe is also more difficult to rear than the female, and 
 the proportion of deaths and still-births is greater among them. To 
 neutralize this increased death-rate there are more male children 
 born than female, the proportion varying between iii (Servia) to 
 94 (Greece) male to 100 female. (Another census gives Greece 1 1 1 
 boys to 100 girls.) The general average is about 105 males to 100 
 females in civilized communities. Amongst the well-to-do class in 
 cities and in some country districts, the general excess of male births 
 is found reversed, as in Asiatic Turkey. This is not, as a rule, a 
 favorable sign for a community, Communities with an excess of 
 female births are generally situated unfavorably as to climate, 
 customs, or other conditions to the vigor of the race. A point to 
 consider in this connection is the curious fact that in some of our 
 Western communities, where the males greatly outnumber the 
 females, there is found a tendency to the production of a larger pro- 
 portion, than normal, of female children. In Arizona they are 
 actually in excess of the male infants. We might think this due to 
 some obscure equalizing process of nature, were the same fact not 
 true of lyouisiana, Delaware, and North Carolina. After several very 
 deadly wars, in which the males were much reduced, notably in those 
 almost continuous wars of Frederick the Great, the proportion of 
 male births became and remained for some time much above the 
 normal in the populations affected. An abnormal excess of female 
 births may be a good sign at one place or time, while very unfavor- 
 able at another. 
 
 Amongst savages and barbarians, as well as the civilized, there 
 are marked differences in the proportion of the sexes bom. In 
 polygamy there is an excess of females bom, in polyandr>^ an 
 excess of males much above our figures. Hardship seems to produce 
 most males, and ease and idleness most females. Inbreeding tends 
 to males, and crossing to females. These matters and tendencies are 
 true of the higher animals also. 
 
 At birth the average weight of a male child is 7 pounds ; of a 
 female, 6}^ pounds. 
 
 The male is taller, heavier, and fiercer than the female. He has 
 a larger proportion of muscle and bone in his weight, while the 
 female ^as a larger proportion of adipose tissue or fat. Thus a man 
 with a beautiful arm must be muscular and strong in that arm. A 
 civilized woman with a beautiful arm may not be strong. The lines 
 of beauty in the one are made by muscle ; in the other, partly by 
 an adipose layer. 
 
Sex, 3 
 
 The blood of the two sexes varies. The observations of Dr. 
 Mikulicz show that haemoglobin is present in the blood in largest 
 quantities between the ages of twenty and thirty years. It is at its 
 minimum in children under ten. In females it is less at all periods 
 of life than in males. It is always found reduced in persons with 
 tuberculosis, syphilis, and malignant tumors. The loss of blood of 
 course diminishes it. In females during menstruation the chemical 
 composition of the blood changes, and the carbons are reduced. 
 After the climateric women's blood more nearly resembles men's. 
 
 There are some differences in the use of foods. G. Munro Smith 
 of Bristol states that where a man of stated weight and activities eats 
 nineteen ounces of food, a woman of the same weight and activities 
 eats from fourteen to fifteen. In other words, there is an average 
 difference of four or five ounces in the consumption of food between 
 the sexes of the same weight and life. This would indicate a better 
 digestion in the female, or an additional and expensive unformulated 
 use of the extra food in the male. 
 
 The male uses the greatest amount of narcotic and stimulant 
 amongst all races. Some rational explanation of the use of these 
 agents is attempted in an article of mine on Diet. The conclusion 
 arrived at is that the general use of narcotics and stimulants is due 
 to an effort to escape from the nerve strain and pressure consequent 
 on change and progress in society. 
 
 The thyroid gland, commonly called "Adam's apple," is propor- 
 tionately larger in the male than in the female. The function of this 
 gland is not known. It seems, however, to have some obscure con- 
 nection with the intelligence, for its entire extirpation is usually 
 followed by imbecility. 
 
 The comparative sitting height of women is greater than that of 
 men ; that is, the body is longer and the legs shorter proportionately 
 than in men. 
 
 The arm-stretch more nearly equals the height in women than 
 in men. 
 
 The knee-joint in women is characteristic. The articular surfaces 
 of the tibia and femur are narrower and the patella smaller. Con- 
 sequently a woman's knee, when bent especially, is smoother and 
 rounder than a man's. 
 
 Women have a superior expectation of life at all ages over men. 
 Consequently childbirth, whatever its dangers are, is more than 
 neutralized by other conditions favorable to women's lives. 
 
 The articulations and shape of the bones are different in the two 
 sexes, being less suited to physical and continued effort in the 
 female. In the woman the clavicle or collar-bone is quite a different 
 
4 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 shape from the same bone in the man ; it is also proportionately 
 longer. From this cause all overhand action is awkward to the 
 female. This seems a provision of nature against this movement, as 
 it is one of the most dangerous for a pregnant woman. A forcible 
 overhand movement is likely to rupture the membranes and cause an 
 abortion. It must be said, however, that the shape of the clavicle 
 varies considerably in men, and seems to bear some relation to the 
 amount of physical exercise performed. Consequently, the difference 
 in the shape of this bone in the two sexes may not be due entirely 
 to inheritance of sexual variation. (See Holden's Osteology, p. 131.) 
 The bones of the male are not only larger than those of the 
 female, but they are different in structure. This difference of struc- 
 ture has the effect of making the bones of the male human being the 
 hardest. The bones in the female skull are thinner than those in 
 that of the male. The shape of the female skull is similar to that 
 of the male child. The variations in the skull are as follows (see 
 table, opposite page) : 
 
 " Variations dependent upon age : 
 
 "The proportions of the skull change most considerably in the first year, 
 and continue to change up to the fourth year. After that, modifications are 
 slight in amount and appear more slowly. By the end of the seventh 5^ear the 
 skull has nearly reached its full size (see table), more nearly in girls than in 
 boys. The chief measurements during childhood are given in the table. The 
 protuberances and ridges are less marked in children. 
 
 "The orbital index, i. e., rates of height to width of orbit, undergoes great 
 changes during growth. In young children it is 100, i. e., the height and 
 
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The Conquest of Death, 
 
 breadth are equal. In adults it is 84.-6 (Weisbach), i. e., the breadth is a fifth 
 greater than the height. The naso-bregmatic arc is relatively smaller. 
 Women have relatively narrower orbits (Zuckerkandl), corresponding to smaller 
 frontal lobes. 
 
 "The posterior half of the naso-occipital arc is greater relatively in woman. 
 The lambdo-occipital arc, indeed, is actually absolutely longer in woman 
 (Benedikt's figures. See table). The cephalic index is greater in women 
 (Germans), i. <?., their skulls are relatively broader. The empirical greatest 
 height is relatively much lower in women ; in other words, women (Germans) 
 have lower as well as broader skulls. 
 
 " To sum up, the female skull is larger posteriorly, is broader, lower, with 
 higher orbital diameter, often it has no glabella, no super-glabellar depressions, 
 and is less well marked as to its ridges, prominences, and sutures. 
 
 " Variations as regards race :" 
 
 The length-breadth index and other cranial indices, and the vol- 
 ume, are the only radical differences so far extensively studied. 
 Even these are too indefinite factors to be of any practical value. 
 In general we may say that the Dolichocephalic or long-headed races 
 are the English, Irish, Scandinavians, Negroes, 73 ; Arabs, 74 ; 
 Chinese, 76. 
 
 " The Brachy cephalic, or broad-headed, are the Germans, 81 : Russians ; 
 Turks, 81. 
 
 "The Mesocephalic, or medium-shaped heads, are the American Indians, 
 79 ; Hollanders ; Parisians, 79." 
 
 Dolichocephaly, or long-headedness, is due to a development of 
 bones which varies with age and sex. In the infant it is occipital ; 
 in the child, temporal ; and in the male adult, frontal. In the woman 
 it is always temporal. This is but one of many facts going to show 
 that the development of woman is generally arrested at a certain 
 point below the male, doubtless to liberate the energies for the 
 development and functioning of the reproductive organs. 
 
 Another instance of the same kind is the nasal index, which is 
 greater in the female than in the male in all known races. It is 
 greater in the infant than in the adult, and consequently the female, 
 in this respect, resembles the infant. 
 
 These details are presented to indicate a brain difference due to 
 sex, but no question of superiority or inferiority of brain quality is 
 pretended to be shown. In fact, the whole question of intellectual 
 manifestation as related to brain mass is in an unsatisfactory condi- 
 tion. Even in prehistoric remains we find skulls showing a larger 
 cubic capacity than those of our own people. One instance of this 
 may be cited in the skulls taken from certain caves in France to- 
 gether with stone implements showing the life of their people to 
 have been similar to that of savages in our day. The average of 
 these Cromagnon skulls is not only larger than our own, but even 
 
Sex, 7 
 
 the skulls classed as female have a larger cubic capacity than 
 modern male skulls. In this connection it is well to call attention 
 to an unpleasant presumption in regard to evolution. It is that 
 the life of a savage hunter and warrior is such that close attention, 
 skilled observation of nature, self-reliance, and a wide knowledge 
 of topography are essential to existence, and that brain qualities may 
 consequently be better developed than they are amongst the great 
 mass of civilized men living by a narrow specialized routine. Ancient 
 British skulls (prehistoric) show a larger cubic capacity than those 
 of the modern English, and their average is higher than all but a few 
 of the most noted skulls measured. 
 
 The methods of brain measurement have not been uniform ; no 
 account has been taken of age, condition, or cause of death. All 
 of these things influence brain weight. These sources of error are 
 great. In a private letter to Sir Daniel Wilson, Dr. Wyman states 
 the cubic capacity of Daniel Webster's skull to be 122 cubic inches. 
 This is equivalent to 65 oz. of brain, but the Doctor gives the brain 
 weight as 53.5 oz., which is the accepted figure. One must realize 
 that the brain weight of Daniel Webster in full health and at ma- 
 turity would be difierent from that of Daniel Webster old and dead 
 after a waste of tissue due to disease. 
 
 The noted brain weights are those of Cuvier, 64.5 oz. ; Aber- 
 crombie, 63 oz. ; Byron, 63.5 oz. ; Spurzheim, 55.6 oz. ; Dirichlet, 
 53.6 oz. ; Webster, 53.5 oz. 
 
 But these, taken with measurements by Dr. Peacock of a sailor's, 
 a printer's, and a tailor's brain, which gave from 61 to 62.75 oz., 
 and the measurement by Thurman of the brain of an ignorant 
 butcher (62 oz.), show how unreliable brain mass is as an indication 
 of brain manifestation. 
 
 The brain of the ant is minute, but its manifestations of intelli- 
 gence are remarkable. After an examination into these matters the 
 Peabody Report of '74 gives a good summary of the situation as 
 follows : 
 
 ' * All this goes to show, and cannot be too much insisted upon, that the 
 relative capacity of the skull is to be considered merely as an anatomical and 
 not as a physiological characteristic ; and unless the quality of the brain can 
 be represented at the same time as the quantity, brain measurement cannot 
 be assumed as an indication of the intellectual position of races any more 
 than of individuals." 
 
 The thigh bone or femur is relatively shorter in women than in 
 men. At the same time the diameter of the thigh is larger than in 
 men ^nd is the one measurement which in all ages is greater in the 
 female than in the male. 
 
8 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 The angle formed by the neck of the femur with the shaft is 
 smaller in women than in men (Humphrey). 
 
 The neck of the woman is longer, the shoulders are more sloping, 
 are set farther back, and are less broad than in the male, while the 
 hips of the female are relatively the broader. The skin is smoother 
 in the female. 
 
 At Meudon during the Reign of Terror in the French Revolu- 
 tion, there was a tannery of human skins. The skins were taken 
 from the victims of the guillotine. In the course of this extraor- 
 dinary industry it was found that the skins of men made a good 
 tough wash-leather superior to chamois, but that the skins of the 
 women were unserviceable owing to the softness of their texture. 
 The skin, it must be said, is influenced as to its texture or toughness 
 by uses. Whether a difference in uses between the male and female 
 victims of the guillotine, largely aristocrats, existed to such an ex- 
 tent to account for the skin variations found is a question. 
 
 The breathing of the female is done with the chest muscles, while 
 the breathing of the male is performed with the abdominal muscles. 
 This, however, may be partly due to the practice of wearing corsets,, 
 which, by their constriction of the abdomen, lower the normal posi- 
 tion of the uterus from two to five tenths of an inch, diminish its 
 natural mobility, push the vital organs up on the lungs, and prevent 
 the expansion of the abdomen necessary to the male type of 
 breathing. 
 
 Certain examinations of Chinese and Indian women tend to con-^ 
 firm the supposition that the costal breathing of women is thus 
 caused. On the other hand, the experiments on the women of civil- 
 ized countries by Drs. Hutchinson, .Gibson, and Riegel show that 
 the costal type of breathing commences in our females at about the 
 tenth year, and before they wear corsets at all. 
 
 These experiments go to show that whatever the type of breath- 
 ing of women originally was, in civilized women it has come about 
 the age of puberty to be costal, and they give some reason to think 
 that this is the case irrespective of the corset. 
 
 The costal type of breathing is the only safe way for civilized 
 women to breathe during pregnancy. It may be surmised that the 
 difiiculties of reproduction, increasing with progress, have forced this 
 type of breathing generally upon the higher-race women. Vierodt 
 in his Physiology of Childhood shows that the sex of a child may be 
 determined at the tenth year by the breathing alone. In the male 
 it is deeper and more regular. 
 
 According to the recent investigations of Dr. Masge of Zurich 
 (1888), the radiation of heat from the skin was found to be more in- 
 tense in men than in women, in boys than in girls, in young persons 
 
Sex. 9 
 
 than in old, and in the vigorously healthy than in the feeble, or 
 those convalescing from illness. 
 
 The average woman can withstand the cold of surf bathing 
 longer than the average man. At a seaside resort muoh frequented, 
 the male companions of the female bathers may be observed every 
 day in the season, cold, blue, and shivering, while the women are in 
 full enjoyment of the bath and not at all cold. Whether this female 
 superiority is due to a smaller radiation of heat or to the adipose 
 layer which all normal women have under the skin, or a combination 
 of both, is not known. 
 
 The average lung capacity of the male in America is ninety cubic 
 inches greater than that of the female (Sargent). In England, 
 eighty-one cubic inches (Galton). "The female also exhales less 
 carbonic acid relative to the weight than man, showing that the 
 evolution of energy is relatively less, as well as absolutely less, in 
 women" (Sargent). 
 
 The step of the woman averages twenty inches ; that of the tnah 
 twenty-five inches. The woman turns her feet out more than the man, 
 an action unfavorable to rapid motion (Dr. Gille de la Tourette). 
 
 The growth of the pelvis in the female about the age of puberty 
 throws the articulation of the femur, or the thigh bone, out farther 
 than it is in man, inclining the knees together. This peculiarity 
 again makes rapid movement more difiicult than it is with the male, 
 and is opposed to long standing. Both of these acts would be in- 
 judicious in a pregnant woman. 
 
 Women generally button from right to left and men from left to 
 right. The drawing of circles for the two sexes usually follows the 
 same opposition. 
 
 The senses are less acute in women than in men. Women can 
 neither see, hear, taste, nor smell so well as men. In the recent ex- 
 periments of Nichols and Bailey, the sense of smell was found to 
 cease at the following dilutions : 
 
 MAI,ES. FEMAI,ES. 
 
 Cloves, . I part in 88.128 i part in • . 50.667 
 
 Nitrite of am yl, i " " 783.870 j «< «« 311.330 
 
 Extract of garhc, i " *' 57-927 ^ << «< 43.900 
 
 Bromine, . i << «« 49.254 j «< << 16.244 
 
 Prussic acid, i " " 112.000 j «« «< 18.000 
 
 Prof. Caesar lyombroso has made experiments which show women 
 to have a keener sense of smell than men, but to have a much less 
 delicate sense of touch or of pain. Here is the Medical Record's 
 summary of his article : 
 
 THE INSENSIBII^ITY OF WOMEN. 
 
 Professor Caesar Lombroso contributes to the Fortnightly Review an arti- 
 cle on the insensibility of women, in which he reaches some rather novel con- 
 
lo The Conquest of Death, 
 
 elusions. Professor Lombroso states that accurate studies as to the relative 
 sensibility of woman as compared with man have never been made. He has 
 himself tested the delicacy of the sense of touch, pain, general sensibility 
 whatever that may mean), smell, and taste in one hundred women and men. 
 He finds that the tactile sense in men, as measured by the sesthenometer, aver- 
 ages about 1.6 mm. ; in women of the lower classes it is 2.6, of the higher classes, 2 
 mm. The sense of pain, tested by the electrical algometer, is in young men 
 64, in older men, 78 mm. ; in young women, 53, and in older women, 70 mm. 
 In other words, the sensibility to touch and pain is less in women. Smell and 
 taste are rather keener in women. He does not speak of those most import- 
 ant of all the senses, sight and hearing. Lombroso states that he has been in- 
 formed by surgeons that women show greater insensibility and less shock from 
 the pain of surgical operations. Their lesser degree of sexual sensibility is 
 generally admitted ; their inferior moral sensitiveness is accepted as a fact by 
 I/ombroso. It would probably be denied by most women, as well as by many 
 of their chivalrous, if not scientific, admirers. The supposed lesser sensibility 
 of women is thought to be one reason for their greater longevity. 
 
 These contradictions are certainly unsatisfactory^ 
 
 On the other hand, it is said that women make excellent astronom- 
 ical observers. Miss Maury at Harvard is a notable instance of this. 
 
 The voices of the sexes distingush them from each other, the 
 voice of the woman being pitched higher than that of the man. 
 That of the male, in early life of the same type as the female, 
 changes at the age of puberty and becomes gruffer and more forcible 
 in its tones. 
 
 The hair grows differently in the two sexes. The woman has, as 
 a rule, little hair except on the scalp of the head, about the pubic 
 region, and a little under the arms. With the man the hair grows 
 also on the face and often on the arms, legs, and breast. The beard 
 enables a man to hide his emotions, while Nature makes no provi- 
 sions for woman in this respect. 
 
 I am informed by several professors, having charge of the higher 
 education of our universities, where co-education has been intro- 
 duced, that there is a difference in the aptitudes of the two sexes. 
 The men are more progressive and the women more diligent. The 
 men excel in mathematics, and the more abstruse studies, while the 
 young women are stronger in the languages and in literary studies. 
 Some of the young lady graduates confirm this view. In Cam- 
 bridge, England, a number of remarkable instances of female 
 capacity in mathematics have been recorded. 
 
 Professor Jastrow has made some interesting experiments in the 
 mental differences of the two sexes. Amongst them one in which he 
 took 25 men and 25 women out of a class in psychology and got 
 them to write as rapidly as possible the first hundred words that 
 occurred to them. 
 
Sex. 1 1 
 
 The women used 1123 different words, the men 1376. The 
 women wrote 520 words occurring but once in the list, and the 
 men 746. 
 
 In the civil-service examinations about one half of all candidates 
 pass, but of the female candidates four fifths pass. This shows 
 either that the females are more industrious, of a superior class, or of 
 larger capacity. 
 
 Professor Jones, of the University of California, a bright and ob- 
 servant man, has been unable to notice any difference in the average 
 of the standing of the sexes in any study. The views of this pro- 
 fessor may be summarized as follows : 
 
 The strongest minds without exception are amongst the males. 
 
 The average standing of the sexes, however, is about the same. 
 
 The women seldom select the scientific or mathematical courses. 
 
 The women students come of their own will, somewhat against 
 the fashion, with a keen desire to obtain the university education. 
 On the other hand, the men, in many instances, come without inter- 
 est, sent by parents to conform to custom. Therefore the women are 
 a picked class in the university, and must be for some time yet. There 
 seems to be no more demonstrated tendency in the female university 
 students at Berkeley against marriage and child-bearing than 
 amongst the well-to-do classes generally. 
 
 It might be surmised that the knowledge acquired by these young 
 women should improve their view of marriage and maternity enough 
 to counteract the increased strain on their nerves and consequent di- 
 minished capacity for reproduction. It must be admitted, however, 
 that a full university course postpones marriage and tends to make it 
 come dangerously late. The girl's chances with such postponement 
 must be diminished, and one would infer that she would be less 
 likely to marry, both on account of her age and on account of the 
 high standard she is likely to set for her husband. 
 
 In the Seventeenth Annual Report of the Massachusetts Bureau of 
 Labor Statistics an examination is made of the condition of the 
 graduates of female colleges from New England to Kansas. This 
 examination must give cause for considerable reflection to the 
 judicious. 
 
 The histories of 705 graduates of female colleges are tabulated in 
 the report. The average age of the 705 is 28.58 years, or several 
 years more than the average age at which women marry. 
 
 Of the 705 at this average post-marital age, 509, or 72. 2 per cent., 
 were still single ; 196, or 27.8 per cent., were married. The average 
 duration of the married life of these was 6. 7 years, or sufiiciently long to 
 indicate the fertility of the marriage. Of these 196 married ones, 130 
 
12 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 had children and 66 had none. In other words, almost half of the 
 marriages were still absolutely sterile. The 196 had 263 children, of 
 whom 232 were alive, or an average of one living child and thirteen 
 hundreths of a child per marriage. 
 
 Of the 705, 417 report suffering from disorders. Of these disor- 
 ders, 137 were of the nervous system, 26 of the urinary organs, and 
 112 of the generative organs, or a total of 275 disorders especially 
 inimical to child-bearing. 
 
 In looking over the returns and the comments, one is impressed 
 with the idea that the graduates are desirous of leaving a favorable 
 impression of the results of female education. These facts, when 
 properly sifted, are far from doing this. At the same time, it seems 
 fair to say that these figures show that the college life itself has had 
 no generally unfavorable effect upon the health of the graduates. 
 
 In estimating the value of the marriage- and birth-rate amongst 
 these highly educated young women, we must bear in mind a fact 
 also set forth in the Reports of the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Sta- 
 tistics. It is that, as a rule, fertility diminishes in Massachusetts 
 with the ability to care for children. Thus the average number of 
 those dependent on the wage-earner is 3.08 persons, while the num- 
 ber of those dependent on the salaried-class individual averages 2.64. 
 The marriage-rate is also smaller in the salaried. The family of the 
 well-to-do class is still smaller than either of the above, and in some 
 districts of native Americans the birth-rate is one insuring prompt 
 extermination. 
 
 It may therefore be that the birth-rate of these nearly twenty-nine- 
 year-old collegians is only the generally fatal and exterminating one 
 of those into whose aims, ambitions, and beliefs their education 
 brings them. 
 
 I am informed that there is a society of female graduates keep- 
 ing a record of the post-graduate life of each member of the society, 
 which must be very valuable and become more so every year. I 
 have, however, been unable to obtain this record. 
 
 The vital statistics of England, as worked out by Galton, show 
 that it requires an average of six children to a marriage to maintain 
 the population of England stationary. It requires an average of 
 four children to a marriage to perpetuate two lives continuously in 
 reproduction. In other words, counting those who do not marry, 
 those who are sterile, together with the deaths before maturity, it 
 requires six children to a marriage to maintain the population of 
 England. Counting the chances of death, impotence, sterility, or 
 celibacy an average of four children are required for the perpetua- 
 tion of two lives. When we find that the number of children to a 
 
Sex, 13 
 
 marriage amongst intelligent Americans in many parts of this coun- 
 try is insufficient to perpetuate even those married, and that the un- 
 married are largely confined to this class, we cannot but fear that 
 the present so-called higher system of education of women is fatal to 
 the best interests, nay even to the life, of the race. 
 
 We have now two extremes of women in our society : the highly 
 educated woman, who becomes a writer, painter, teacher, lecturer, 
 actress, etc. , on the one hand ; and, on the other, the mistress or prosti- 
 tute. The first class comprising the best educated (?) and probably 
 the best minds of American women ; the second class comprising, 
 amongst the poorer classes at least, the most beautiful physiques. 
 
 Both classes do not, as a rule, breed. Both classes are growing 
 faster than the population. Thus we are losing our best minds and 
 most beautiful bodies in women through sterility. 
 
 What will Americans be in another generation, or will there be 
 any of the old stock ? 
 
 While infertility is frequent in the highly educated, it is by no 
 means confined to them. Quiet reflection on the facts will bring to 
 us the realization that infertility both natural and artificial is due to 
 causes independent of college curriculums. But such a realization 
 need not blind us to the probable cumulative influence toward sterility 
 of an education of women not in harmony with their functions or 
 duties to the race. 
 
 It may be noted that the adaptability of young women to a col- 
 lege course, as shown in their successes at Cambridge, Berkeley, etc., 
 indicates forcibly that the home influences, to which they were more 
 subject than boys, are in no way unfavorable to subsequent success in 
 study. 
 
 The fashion of sterility and child limitation, now so widespread, 
 may in the end be cured by a higher education of women. It may 
 in fact be curable in no other way. Certainly, a high and true edu- 
 cation in harmony with nature ought not to produce any disinclina- 
 tion to the highest function of humanity — creation. No less eminent 
 authority than Sir W^illiam Gull of Great Britain is reported to have 
 said that the benefit derived from a university education, such as girls 
 get at Newnham and Girton, makes them and their children stronger 
 and healthier ; also that the percentage of childless marriages is 
 less with the educated women, and the percentage of children that 
 survive infancy is larger. 
 
 This opinion of an eminent man may or may not be correct, 
 but it is encouraging. My own observation is that the best mothers, 
 and those realizing and glorying in the grandeur of procreation, are 
 women of large capacity and wide information. 
 
14 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 Recent examination of class histories of both males and females 
 force me to the unwilling conclusion that the higher education, as 
 exemplified in university graduates, is sterilizing in both sexes. 
 One of the male classes had a history covering fifty years, and showed 
 a procreative power too small to maintain the orginal number of the 
 class and the wives of such as married. Whether this showing 
 would be different from that of an equal number of lives in the 
 superior ranks without university training is not within my power 
 to say, but in any case it is a very unfavorable showing for our 
 educational system. The female classes show the greatest sterili- 
 zation. 
 
 It has been generally remarked that women, when allowed the 
 opportunity, are more devoted to religious forms than men, and ad- 
 here to such forms long after men have lost interest in them, as is 
 the case in society, when the development of institutions becomes un- 
 suited to the religious forms. Women, also, run from conservatism 
 to the extreme of radicalism more frequently than men. The scenes 
 of the French Revolution and the later French Commune, the ac- 
 counts of the saints in the overthrow of old religions, or in the sup- 
 port of orthodox ideas, our own experience with slavery, temper- 
 ance, etc., almost invariably show the women, when associated in a 
 movement, either at one extreme or the other. 
 
 In the woman, as a rule, we find that the emotions dominate the 
 reason, and it is safe to say generally that the civilized female, when 
 mature, has motives, emotions, and reason more like those of the 
 child or of primitive man than has the male. 
 
 It is claimed, and with strong color of reason, that these character- 
 istics of the sex are the product of the conditions in which they have 
 lived from time immemorial. We may admit this without abandon- 
 ing a conservative position in face of the extraordinary changes 
 proposed in sex relationships, and for that matter already largely 
 prevalent. 
 
 The condition of the polyandrous Thibetan woman is superior. 
 She dominates, as a rule, her husbands. The Thibetan civilization, 
 however, is a failure. 
 
 So it is with other present communities with the female dom- 
 inant. In the past we find a number of records of women taking 
 activities different from what the old fogies think wise, but we find 
 no case where the type of civilization thus ordered was perpetuated. 
 
 The pulse is more rapid and irregular in woman than in man. 
 The average weight of the adult American man is 141 1-2 lbs. ; of 
 the adult American woman 124 1-2 lbs. These figures are not from 
 complete examinations but from partial examinations of a number 
 
Sex. 
 
 15 
 
 of men and women in similar conditions of life, and may be considered 
 to approximate the truth. 
 
 Sargent's figures for America are different and make the male ex- 
 ceed the female by 21.5 lbs., while Galton's English figures give the 
 difference as 22 lbs. The relative difference in height of the sexes 
 
 
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i6 
 
 The Conquest of Death, 
 
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 boys' chart. When the mean measurements of the girls, however, are plotted 
 on the boys' chart, they fall at the points indicated by the irregular full line 
 (Chart i), and the mean measurements of the boys fall on the girls' chart at 
 the points indicated by the broken line on the same chart. 
 
 " In following the two lines on the chart, some interesting facts are brought 
 to light. We find that at the age of. fifteen the mean weight of the girls and 
 
Sex, ly 
 
 boys is the same. At the age of thirteen the girl is heavier and taller thaa 
 the boy of the same age. It will be observed, however, that at the age of fifteen 
 the boys exceed the girls in height about three quarters of an inch. The height 
 of the knee is only a trifle lower than that of the boys, while the sitting 
 height of the girls is actually greater than the mean sitting height of the boys. 
 How then shall we account for the superior total height of the boys ? In look- 
 ing on the chart for the height of the pubic arch in girls we find it on the 25 
 per cent, line of the boys' chart. This means that 75 per cent, of the boys sur- 
 pass this measurement, while only 60 per cent, of them surpass the mean total 
 height of the girls. The diflference in height, then, is due to the shortness of 
 the bones below the pelvis. I have already shown that the height of knee is 
 nearly equal to that of the boys, so we must look to the comparative shortness 
 of the thigh bone in girls to account for the difference in stature. Although 
 the body length in girls is greater than that in boys, the difference as shown by 
 the sitting height is largely due to the greater length of neck and head in 
 ^irls, as shown by the superiority in boys in the height of the sternum. 
 
 '* In girths the differences are more marked, the mean girth of head in the 
 girls being only about \ of an inch below that of the boys, while the neck is 
 about f of an inch smaller. There is but little difference in the natural chest 
 of the two sexes at this age. The boys, however, show a superior expansive 
 power when the chest is inflated. In the girth of waist the measurement of 
 the girls is i^ inch smaller than that of the boys, while the girth of the hips is 
 if inch larger. The greatest difference, however, is in the girth of the thighs. 
 Here the actual measurements exceed that of the boys by two inches, while 
 the relative difference is much greater. It will be observed that the mean 
 girth of the knee is the same in both sexes, but that the girth of the calf is f of 
 an inch greater in the girl. In the bone measurements, as indicated by the 
 instep, elbow, and wrist, the superiority of the boys becomes more manifest. 
 There is but a slight difference in the girths of the upper arm, but the right arm 
 of the boys is \ of an inch larger than the left. This makes the left arm of the 
 girl appear larger than the right, though both are of the same size. 
 
 " At the time these measurements were taken, the depth of the chest and 
 abdomen had not been added to the list, and have consequently been omitted 
 in the plotting. The difference in the mean measurements of the breadth of 
 the head and neck is less than \ of an inch for each part. The shoulders of 
 the boys are about f of an inch wider than the shoulders of the girls, while 
 the hips of the girls are f of an inch broader than those of the boys. The 
 actual difference in the breadth of the waist in the two sexes is quite marked. 
 Even at this age the girls' waist is f of an inch narrower than the boys'. 
 
 "The relative difference between breadth of waist and breadth of hips of 
 the girls is greater, when compared with the same measurements of the boys, 
 than the relative difference between the breadth of waist and breadth of 
 shoulders in the two sexes. 
 
 "The length of upper arm of the girls is about \ of an inch less than that 
 of the boys, while the forearm and hand is f of an inch shorter. In length of 
 foot the boys have the start of the girls at this age by over ^ inch, and in stretch 
 of arms by fully two inches. The girls compare less favorably with the boys 
 in the point of strength. In capacity of lungs the girls are seventy cubic 
 inches behind the boys, and in the strength of expiratory muscles the weakest 
 boys in the 5 per cent, class are stronger than the average girl. In strength 
 

 
 
 
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Sex. 
 
 19 
 
 of back, legs, chest, and arms the showing is a little better for the girls, though 
 considerably below what it should be. 
 
 " It will be seen that the mean strength test of the girls falls below the 10 
 per cent, line of the boys' table, while the mean strength of the boys exceeds 
 the 90 per cent, line on the girls' table. This indicates that 50 per cent, of the 
 girls fail to reach a point in strength that is surpassed by 90 per cent, of the 
 boys." 
 
 The investigator was not prejudiced in favor of the male, as the 
 following sentences will show : 
 
 " In taking the sum of certain important measurements such as the head, 
 chest, waist, legs, and arms, we find that the mean total of the girth dimen- 
 sions of these parts in the girls is equal to that of the boys. We are accus- 
 tomed to regard the sum of these measurements as indicative of the potential 
 strength of the individual." 
 
 " Why, then, is not the girl of this age equal to her brother in strength, 
 activity, and endurance?" 
 
 As age increases the measurements change and the man forges 
 ahead. At full maturity he exceeds the female in every measure- 
 ment except the diameter of the thigh. Proportionately, however, 
 the woman exceeds the man in breadth of hip. 
 
 At about twelve years of age the two sexes average nearly the 
 same weight. This is owing to the fact that at about the age of puberty 
 a rapid increase of weight takes place in each sex ; the girl, reaching 
 puberty first, for a short time about equals the male in weight. 
 
 In America at thirteen the girl is taller and heavier than the boy, 
 at fifteen the boy is taller by three quarters of an inch, while the girl 
 is still the heavier ; after this the boy's physical larger size becomes 
 rapidly more marked. 
 
 The female matures physically and mentally sooner than the 
 male. 
 
 We see, for instance, boys' parts in plays almost invariably taken 
 by girls. It is to be presumed that this fact is due to the compara- 
 tive incompetency of the boys at any of the early ages for such work. 
 
 At an age varying between the sexes, and also varying with cli- 
 mate, with city or country residence, with race and with occupation, 
 comes the age of puberty. 
 
 It is at this time that the powers of reproduction develop in each 
 sex. The female reaches this period from one to three years sooner 
 than the male, and loses the reproductive power much earlier. 
 
 At the age of puberty the constitution is in a semi-confusion con- 
 sequent upon the change of balance of powers to be maintained. 
 New ideas, new blushes, new yearnings come to both sexes. It is a 
 
20 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 time when great care is required for the mental, physical, and moral 
 welfare of the individual. The girl at this period develops, rounds 
 out, and becomes more peculiarly feminine than before. The boy 
 changes still more in the other direction. The beard commences to 
 grow, the voice changes its timbre, and becomes rougher, and the 
 body takes a new development of height and weight. 
 
 The system in the Bast of making eimuchs of the boys prevents 
 these sexual changes. In eunuchs the character is as mutilated and 
 incomplete as the body. The spayed female also, if young, never 
 progresses in female characteristics. If mutilated when older, there is 
 sometimes a tendency in voice, beard growth, etc. , to the ^ale type. 
 
 Sex is an evolution presumably necessary for the highest forms of 
 life. lyife in its most primitive conditions has no sex, — reproduction 
 is by division. Then we find an added germ type evolved — still 
 without sex, the main reproduction continuing by division ; then 
 comes the next step, a budding process by which, as in corals, the 
 renewed life buds out of the old ; then a condition of sex, but both 
 sexes in the same individual, as is still the case with most plants ; 
 and lastly the sex separation of the individuals, with, however, 
 many of the primitive types temporarily asexual in reproduction by 
 parthenogenesis. Each step finds a place for a higher life. Sex is 
 not to be obliterated nor assimilated, but further difierentiated if the 
 same path of progress is to be followed. Whether the male or female 
 is superior, is a question of naught. Which should do the outside 
 fight for life and subsistence, is important. 
 
 The fact noted by Darwin of the tendency in the hen when too 
 old to breed to vary toward the male type in hackles, comb, and dis- 
 position, is a suggestion that there is a type for each kind of life, from 
 which the necessities of reproduction and the perpetuation of such 
 life demand variations by both sexes ; that such variations are only 
 necessary during the reproductive period, and consequently they may 
 be expected to be little notable before puberty and tend to disappear 
 after the climacteric. The assimilation of the chemical character of 
 women's blood after the climateric to the blood of men is an indi- 
 cation in the same line. The progressive atrophy of the mammary 
 gland after the menopause is another. 
 
 The Evolution of Sex, by Geddes and Thompson, is a valuable 
 condensed compilation of the information now accumulated in books 
 on this subject. As a summary of this information, we may say that 
 the male and female characteristics pervade all life. As life is of 
 simple organization so are these characteristics least notable, while 
 as life is of complex organization so is sex most marked. In uni- 
 cellular life already a beginning may be perceived. Cells often meet 
 
Sex, 
 
 21 
 
 or merge together, after which reproduction takes place by division. 
 In the merging we may note that it is between a large, nutritive, and 
 sluggish cell and a small, hungry, active cell. This foreshadows 
 sex. No matter under what variations we find life, we find these 
 types in reproduction. At last differentiated in sex, we find the 
 female sex always anabolic and the male sex always katabolic. 
 
 The female type is anabolic — nutritive, conservative, sluggish. 
 The male type is katabolic — destructive, originative, active. In 
 the ultimate sex-elements the same generalization holds good. 
 Compared to the sperm, the ovum is always large, nutritive, and 
 quiescent. 
 
 The higher the type of life in a general way, the greater and more 
 radical are the sex differences. The necessities of life perpetuation 
 furnish the only explanation of this condition. If it is necessity that 
 makes, perpetuates, and increases sex differences, we are doing some- 
 thing dangerous when we endeavor to neutralize such differences by 
 social rules and laws. 
 
 When the male is inferior to the female in longevity, vitality, etc. , 
 as amongst some insects, the condition has accompanied an arrest of 
 progress, or at least such inferiority of the male is nowhere an accom- 
 paniment of the highest types. Darwin observes in speaking of ani- 
 mals :• " Characters common to the male are occasionally developed 
 in the female when she grows old or becomes diseased, as, for in- 
 stance, when the common hen assumes the flowing tail feathers, 
 hackles, combs, spurs, voice, and even pugnacity of the cock." 
 
 It is a very prevalent custom amongst breeders of animals and 
 birds to unsex a certain proportion of the increase of their herds or 
 flocks. The facility of doing this with the male and comparative 
 difficulty with the female has practically confined the operation to 
 the males. The result is usually an increase in size, an improvement 
 in tenderness of flesh, and a loss of courage and endurance. 
 
 Amongst horses there have been scarcely any great gelding 
 racers. Parole is the only one that I can recall. Geldings lack the 
 courage and ambition for a great race. Stallions in long races will 
 often dominate or apparently overawe both geldings and mares. The 
 great race won by the stallion Swillington, in which, when he found 
 the other horse beating him, he seized the jockey's leg with his teeth 
 and pulled him out of the saddle, illustrates the determination and 
 ambition of the male horse. The Arab idea, and the idea of the 
 early Californians, that only a stallion amongst horses was fit to ride, 
 may have good foundation for it. Stallions are the best mounts for 
 soldiers on account of their courage, and, in fact, are the only 
 reliable horses in a battle, taking them as a class. 
 
22 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 The effect on the brain of unsexing the male is shown in some 
 recent examinations of horses. The proportion of weight of the 
 cerebellum to the cerebrum is : 
 
 In mares 1-5.57 
 
 "geldings 1:5.97 
 
 ''stallions 1 7.07 
 
 The virgin female has a membrane called the hymen. This, as 
 a rule, guarantees virginity. There are, however, a few recorded 
 cases even of impregnation and delivery without the rupture of this 
 membrane, and others where a congenital absence of the hymen has 
 occurred.^ 
 
 There is no means of ascertaining the chastity of a man. Nature 
 demands purity on the part of a woman to secure the paternity of 
 the children and the purity of the breed, which is to be protected by 
 the male of mankind, as it is to a less extent by the males of lower 
 animals. From this reason it may be understood why nature has 
 fixed a test for woman's purity. It must be confessed that this ex- 
 planation is without much force and unsatisfactory. 
 
 Sexual intercourse with a virgin involves, as a rule, the rupture 
 of the hymen and is accompanied with some blood discharge. The 
 linen thus stained was kept by the parents of the bride amongst the 
 ancient Hebrews. Moses makes these tokens a conclusive evidence 
 of the previous chastity of a bride, whose reputation might be at- 
 tacked by her husband. We must, therefore, suppose that the token 
 of virginity, or first intercourse, was practically universal amongst 
 the Hebrews. Such tokens are considered important among many 
 races, such as Arabs, Slavs, etc. There is no available means of 
 knowing whether such tokens are now as general as in antiquity, but 
 there seems no good reason to suppose that they are less so amongst 
 healthy women of our race than they formerly were amongst the 
 Hebrews or our own ancestors, who also demanded these evidences 
 of chastity. Undoubtedly, disease of the reproductive organs or 
 vaginal examinations, digital or instrumental, may destroy the 
 hymen, but in such case the woman is, though carnally chaste, 
 physically contra-indicated for matrimony. 
 
 The function of the hymen in the woman may be to exclude 
 foreign and irritating substances from the generative parts before the 
 age of discretion. In little girls it is about \ of an inch from the 
 surface, while in grown virgins it is from ;^ to J an inch below the 
 
 ' Play fair's System of Midwifery, p. 44. 
 I^eishman's System of Midwifery, p. 7. 
 
Sex. 
 
 23 
 
 surface. This explanation is also unsatisfactory, because the gene- 
 rative organs are more subject to injury by foreign substances after 
 than before childbirth. 
 
 The foreskin in the male probably plays a protecting part. It 
 has, however, no known conditions that would indicate a non-user of 
 sexual functions. 
 
 The vulva is the external female generative organ and the 
 vagina the internal canal by which the fertilizing spermatozoa 
 may be so introduced into the generative organs that they can 
 penetrate into the uterus or Fallopian tubes. For a full description 
 of the human generative organs, Hirsch's work, already referred to, 
 is good. Acton goes somewhat farther into sexual matters in his 
 work. On the Reproductive Organs. He has, however, a proper 
 fear of a thoroughly complete account of all the reproductive func- 
 tions, and, besides, has many personal prejudices which he allows to 
 control his advice. He has, for instance, the ridiculous idea that the 
 female has^ little or no enjoyment in the reproductive act. There is 
 no full and scientific description of the whole reproductive function 
 in man with which I am acquainted, and I am afraid to violate the 
 prejudices of society by any attempt to supply this deficiency. In 
 fact, this fragmentary sketch is already too full to be palatable to the 
 general reader. I have a work in which there is what purports to 
 be a copy of the old rules of the Jesuits for the examination of mar- 
 ried women at the confessional. This comes nearer a complete ex- 
 position and instruction in sexual function than anything else I have 
 ever seen. I must admit that, while I believe in complete instruc- 
 tion on reproductive matters, the most complete work on the matter 
 I know of produced a very unfavorable impression on me. There 
 are a number of works such as Philosophy of Marringe, Tokology^ 
 Naphey's books, etc., etc., that go very extensively into reproductive 
 matters, description of the organs, together with more or less good 
 suggestions and advice on the uses of the function, and still none of 
 them have dared to tell the whole story. In strictly obscene works 
 one may find an account of this function, true, indeed, but again 
 limited, and this time without dignity and thoroughly disgusting. 
 It is delicate and dangerous ground. 
 
 In the healthy female about once a month there occurs a period 
 called the menstrual period. At this time an ^%% bursts from the ovary 
 and passes into the uterus, and if not fertilized, it dies and is elimi- 
 nated. From the wound thus formed and from the uterus blood 
 flows for from one to seven days, or even longer. Exceptions have 
 been noted where no menstrual flow preceded conception, conse- 
 quently the ^%% must have descended without it. But the rule is so 
 
24 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 general that the absence of the menses in a virgin is accepted as a 
 sign of disease or defective organization. 
 
 A number of savage tribes celebrate the first appearance of the 
 menses in the girl by a feast. Her friends call and congratulate her 
 on becoming a woman. This custom when boys reach the age of 
 puberty is also found amongst many peoples. The time or age of 
 the boy is, however, conventional and fixed. In both cases the 
 age varies with climate and race. 
 
 The secretion of the uterus usually precedes the descent of the 
 ^%%. If this secretion persist and be excessive, the ^%% may be 
 washed away, even after union with the spermatozoa of the male. 
 Thus excessive nerve activity or strain, which often deranges this 
 function in women, may induce sterility. 
 
 In explanation of this function, some say that it is the escape of 
 energies stored in the female for procreation and that it is the waste 
 of disappointed Nature ; others say that it makes the opportunity for 
 the ^'g'g fertilized to fix itself in the prepared uterus ; and we may say 
 that we do not know. 
 
 The menstrual period is generally considered by women as a 
 nuisance. In truth, it is a glory, and no greater misfortune can be- 
 fall a woman than the loss of this sign of her reproductive power 
 before the normal time, at between forty and fifty years of age. Such 
 a loss means sterility, ill-health, loss of self-esteem, and unhappiness. 
 
 The human being ^is different from all other animals in repro- 
 duction. In man during the productive age, procreative power is. 
 continuous. In woman it is monthly and only intermitted by 
 conception, lactation, disease, great hardship, or exposure to cold. 
 In Greenland women, for instance, menstruation is generally sup- 
 pressed during the winter months. This is generally true of women 
 living in severe climates. With wild animals in natural condition 
 and birds the reproductive powers are limited to a short season vary-^ 
 ing with the necessities of reproduction in the animal. In most 
 animals this period occurs but once a year. We very suggestively 
 term it the period of rut or ' ' heat. ' ' 
 
 In great labors of mind or body in either sex the powers and 
 inclination for reproduction are diminished. The ^z% which has 
 thus descended into the uterus or into the Fallopian tube near it 
 may be fertilized by man. 
 
 The crisis through which the constitution goes at this time re- 
 quires reduced effort and work and increased precaution against 
 exposure to climate or disease. 
 
 The lessened vitality of females at the time of puberty and ado- 
 lescence is a striking fact, according to Sir James Crichton Brown. 
 
Sex. 
 
 25 
 
 Throughout life, in every quinquennium, the mortality of males 
 from small-pox exceeds that of females, and that in a very marked 
 degree, except in one quinquennium, from the tenth to the four- 
 teenth year, when the female exceeds the male mortality, being 
 again but very slightly behind it in the succeeding quinquennium, 
 from the fifteenth to the nineteenth year. At all ages the male 
 death-rate from enteric fever exceeds that of females, but the female 
 mortality is very considerably higher from the third to the twentieth 
 year of life. In infancy, and also in old age, the male mortality 
 from diarrhoea and dysentery exceeds the female mortality, but in 
 the child-bearing period, from fifteen to forty-five years of age, the 
 mortality is distinctly higher among females. And even more 
 striking in this connection are the statistics of phthisis than those of 
 zymotic diseases. Phthisis is more fatal to males than females under 
 five years of age ; but then a change takes place, and from five to 
 ten it is much more fatal to females than to males ; while from ten 
 to fifteen it is more than twice as fatal to females as to males. From 
 fifteen to twenty, phthisis is still much more fatal to females than to 
 males ; from twenty to twenty -five, the mortality from it is exactty 
 equal in the two sexes, and from twenty-five to thirty, and at all 
 subsequent ages, the mortality from it is much greater among 
 males than among females. Dr. Brown is inclined to attribute 
 this to over-pressure in education ; but surely there are many 
 other factors more important in lowering the vitality of young 
 women. 
 
 Dr. Dimitri Ott, of St. Petersburg, at the International Medical 
 Congress at Berlin, in 1890, showed by extensive examinations of 
 women and girls of various ages that, in addition to the nervous phe- 
 nomena observed in women at the menstrual period, there is a series 
 of variations of normal functions appearing periodically in typical 
 form. The curves of temperature, muscular strength, blood pres- 
 sure, respiration, and nervous irritability all attained their maximimi 
 shortly before menstruation. 
 
 A description of the generative organs of the male or of the acts 
 leading to generation must be sought in a book like Flint's Physi- 
 ology, Acton On the Reproductive Orgajis, or some similar work. 
 
 Acton's work is valuable, but he falls into errors and makes posi- 
 tive statements on questions the evidence on which he must have 
 taken by hearing. He says, for instance, that a normal woman 
 has only exceptionally sexual desire. This is probably a complete 
 reversal of the truth. 
 
 One reading his book should be careful to sift somewhat the 
 proof of Acton's statements. 
 
26 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 Man possesses in the testes an organ for forming the spermatozoa, 
 not, as I know, periodically, but at any time, and by the erectile 
 power of the penis of injecting these living and mysterious spores 
 into the generative organs of the female. In the generative act the 
 male takes the superior and aggressive position, the female the 
 inferior and expectant. 
 
 The male has the power of fertilizing an indefinite number of 
 females within the period of gestation of one child — i. e., nine 
 months. In this period a woman can conceive and bear children 
 but once, and may bear one, two, or, at most, three healthy chil- 
 dren, while man, without the artificial restraint of monogamous mar- 
 riage, might have a large number of healthy children by different 
 mothers. 
 
 The normal secretions in the lower female generative organs, that 
 is, all below the os uteri, are acid, while those of the male are alka- 
 line. This difference is thought to induce electrical phenomena 
 favorable to generation. 
 
 A curious similarity of opposition in chemical reaction exists in 
 the intellectually creative part of our bodies. The gray matter of 
 the brain has an acid reaction, while that of the white is neutral or 
 alkaline. 
 
 When through disease or inflammation the di.scharges of the 
 female generative organs become abnormal, generation does not 
 generally take place, and may never take place. We are not now 
 sufficiently informed on these points to speak with precision, but can 
 only give the general results.' 
 
 This is equally true of the male organs. Gonorrhoea is the vene- 
 real disease that most often causes absolute sterility in both sexes. 
 The mucous inflammation with which this trouble commences often 
 extends to the Fallopian tubes and closes them, imprisoning the eggs, 
 or, completely involving the uterus, prevents conception. In the 
 male the inflammation may close the ducts through which the 
 spermatozoa should pass, or may destroy the power of the testes 
 to properly perfect them. 
 
 The male principle in this most wonderfully creative act has a 
 capacity of independent and continued motion ; that of the female, 
 the ^gg, has none. This is the normal relation of the sexes through- 
 out. The man has the initiative, the woman the passive. 
 
 In the male during adult life spermatozoa are found, as a rule, 
 indicating no periodicity of their formation. They have been found 
 by Duplay and M. A. Dieu in men of advanced age. The figures 
 
 * Thomas' Diseases of Women, pp. 262, 626, 627. 
 
Sex, 27 
 
 as given by Dieu are of twenty-five sexagenarians ; spermatozoids 
 were found in 68.5 per cent. Of seventy-six septuagenarians the 
 per cent, was 59.5 ; of fifty-one octogenarians the per cent, having 
 spermatozoids was 48 ; four having passed the age of ninety gave 
 negative results. It is probable that the spermatozoa persist in 
 many cases when the generative power is lost.' 
 
 Ovulation, or the capacity to conceive, usually ceases in mothers 
 between 43 and 50 ; in virgins or women without children, between 
 38 and 45. Very notable exceptions sometimes occur. A Scotch 
 woman is reported recently as having borne children at the foflowing 
 ages : 47, 49, 51, 53, 56, 60, and 62. The following case is authen- 
 ticated by affidavits : Mr. and Mrs. W. D. Green, of Pike County, 
 Arkansas, have had 23 children, of whom 18 are still living. They 
 have 72 living grandchildren and 12 living great-grandchildren. 
 Mr. Green when married lacked 25 days of being 23 years of age, 
 and at the time of the birth of his last child he was 67 years 7 
 months and 15 days old. Mrs. Green at the date of the birth of her 
 first child \yas 18 years 4 months and 6 days old, and at the time 
 of her last child's birth lacked 11 days of being 62 years old. The 
 children were all bom singly." There are a number of reliable cases 
 on record where women have continued to bear children between 
 50 and 54 years of age. 
 
 If the woman does not become a mother by the age of twenty- 
 five there is a continuous tendency to degeneracy and atrophy of the 
 reproductive organs, therefore a virgin, everything else being equal, 
 cannot be as healthy as a mother after that age. Every additional 
 year makes the change more notable. These changes are especially 
 unfavorable to marriage duties. Conception is less likely to occur 
 after intercourse ; the child conceived is delivered with more diffi- 
 culty and danger, and it is less likely to live. Experience warrants 
 the general presumption that a woman, a virgin at thirty-eight, can, 
 in only exceptional instances, become the mother of a living.child, 
 or of one that may be reared. A few exceptions to this general 
 truth have been brought to my attention. The most striking is that 
 of a woman whose first child was delivered in her forty-second year. 
 This woman had one other child. One of them lived, which, how- 
 ever, is not now ascertainable, but probably the second. 
 
 Another case of a claimed first conception in the forty-ninth year 
 of the woman has been published. The woman lived and the child 
 was delivered by forceps at term. 
 
 ' See Flint's Text-Book of Human Physiology, p. 886. 
 ' Medical Record, June 8, 1889. 
 
28 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 Dr. I^awson Tait says that the human female is an exception 
 amongst animals, in that she has a menopause. He states positively 
 that ovulation continues indefinitel}^ amongst the females of other 
 animals. Cats have kittens at fourteen and fifteen years of age, 
 which would correspond to eighty and ninety in the human being. 
 Mares the same. 
 
 Women married at the proper age, on the other hand, usually 
 continue to bear children well into the forties. Extraordinary cases 
 of prolonged virility are also noted in men. I have personally noted 
 a case of gonorrhoea infection in a man of eighty-six, and there are 
 a few fairly reliable records of men having had children after their 
 one hundreth year, that of Thomas Parr being perhaps at once the 
 best authenticated and the most remarkable. Much question has 
 been recently thrown on the Parr history. 
 
 The Old Testament gives us some notable cases of fertility in 
 advanced ages. From this book we learn that Sarah had her first 
 child at eighty, and that the males retained their virility to wonder- 
 ful ages. Whether the periods of time mentioned in the Bible cor- 
 respond with those now received may, however, well be doubted. 
 
 The female has in the menstrual period a sort of safety-valve for 
 her instinct of reproduction. The man has none except in the per- 
 formance of his part of the act of generation with the woman, or by 
 a destructive abuse of these his highest powers. Nocturnal emis- 
 sions, it is true, can occur naturally without any injury whatever. 
 They are, however, usually the result of abuse or excessive sexual 
 indulgence. Complete continence to the male is comparatively easy ; 
 incomplete continence, however, is most diflScult. 
 
 When the male principle unites with the female, the ^%%, it 
 fertilizes it, stamps it, and fuses with it. From the point of contact 
 life begins and radiates. The life is given by the male. It is he 
 who lights the flame. The ^%% then becomes attached to the uterus. 
 The chorion and placenta develop, thus bringing the child in direct 
 connection with the mother, by whom it is nourished. The blood 
 passes by endosmose and exosmose from one to the other. The 
 child and mother are one. The child is a part of the father ; thus 
 the father is also in the woman, blood to blood, and nerve to nerve. 
 Thus we can understand how it is that a wife comes to resemble a 
 husband after bearing him children, or bears children to a second 
 husband in the likeness of the first. His blood, nerves, and consti- 
 tution in the child are in and connected with the blood, nerves, and 
 constitution of the woman pregnant by him. He is in her but she 
 is not in him. So, the influence telling, she comes to resemble him, 
 not he her, and the child of the second husband resembles the first 
 
Sex, 29 
 
 through the stamp on the woman by the first. I do not wish to be 
 understood to claim that the spermatozoa of the father contain 
 blood or nerves. The spermatozoa, however, do possess a power 
 in generation similar in effect to that of the individual brain in 
 intellectual creation. 
 
 The brain receives blood from the vital organs, and is largely 
 influenced in its activities by the character of that blood, which 
 nourishes and vitalizes it. At the same time the quality and char- 
 acter of an intellectual creation depend upon and are limited by the 
 brain matter through which the blood passes. It is in the brain 
 itself that the individual stamp is given to our thoughts. 
 
 In generation, the spermatozoa and the ovum fuse and become 
 one. The life of the father and mother is there renewed, and the 
 life thus lighted has the power of moulding and forming all the 
 nourishment, giving it growth to the image of the united pair, as 
 fixed in the fertilized egg. The growth of the foetus, and the devel- 
 opment in it of bone, blood, nerve, and brain, is the growth of the 
 father united to the mother. The character and identity of the in- 
 dividual man is fixed and maintained by a stamping or individ- 
 ualizing power of his or her vitality. The cells, molecules, or 
 atoms forming our bodies are ever changing. From year to year, 
 from day to day, from second to second, these atoms die and are 
 swept away to be replaced by others. The process only ceases when 
 Death coldly commands a halt. The force that thus is ever alert to 
 mould each new aliment introduced into the man after birth to the 
 human type, is equally powerful to mould the mother's nourishing 
 blood to the individuality of the unborn child. 
 
 For about nine months the child grows, going through various 
 stages. Commencing with an egg from which all life starts, it has 
 a progress which is a living history of animal evolution. First the 
 semen when liberated from the tubercles of the testes divides up as 
 does the most primitive life. Nuclei have to divide, nucleoli to mul- 
 tiply, and each division of the nucleoli to become, through a gradual 
 adolescence, adult spermatozoa.' From this early increase of life by 
 division we find now the two sexes necessary for reproduction. The 
 female perfects the simple egg as it is in the next step of evolution, 
 then comes fertilization, by union with the male, and wonderful, 
 indeed, we find in this fertilized egg growth and development, con- 
 ditions succeeding each other, which make it similar to the fish, to 
 the reptile, to the lower mammals, to the highest mammals below 
 man, and after birth a still further progression and each change cor- 
 
 ^ See Acton On Reproductive Organs^ p. 91. 
 
30 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 responding in order to the chronology of life established by the 
 geological record. 
 
 During the period of gestation safety to the woman and the life 
 of the child demand a quiet, orderly existence without extreme exer- 
 tion or excitement. For six weeks after the birth of the child, the 
 civilized woman should have absolute quiet and repose. For some 
 months longer great care is required. 
 
 While it is true that many women do well without so long a period 
 of rest and quiet as has been named, it is equally true that a large 
 amount of disease and misery among women results from a neglect 
 or inability to observe the rule for rest and recovery laid down. The 
 risk of uterine trouble, displacement, etc. , after labor is beyond a 
 doubt greatly increased by premature exercise or work. Abortion 
 or premature expulsion of the child caused by weakness, by accident, 
 or by intention requires still more care and is frequently followed by 
 long and distressing illness. 
 
 A medical writer has spoken of abortion as the picking of unripe 
 fruit and compares its effects on the woman to those of such picking 
 on the tree. The green fruit is firm in its fastening to the tree ; to 
 get it off one must pull and twist, with the frequent result of bruised 
 fruit, torn twigs, and broken limbs, and after all it is of no account. 
 The ripe fruit, on the other hand, comes off almost with a touch, 
 perfect in texture and flavor. So with the woman ; before term 
 nothing is ready and the separation of mother and child is under a 
 protest of nature. Hemorrhage, injuries, and even permanent in- 
 validism are a frequent consequence. In all the stages before the 
 sixth month the child is lost, after that and before term it is 
 generally lost or reared with the greatest difficulty. While at term 
 a fatty degeneration has gone on in the parts, resistance is at a 
 minimum, and everything is ready for a return to the conditions 
 before conception. 
 
 Under a protest of nature against a violation of her intentions the 
 delicate generative organs are liable to injury. Thus the child is 
 lost, the mother injured, nature's efforts for the future of the individual 
 are frustrated, and we have as in the orchard only a nubbin and a 
 broken tree. Abortion consequently cannot do away with the neces- 
 sity of care after conception, but rather increases it. 
 
 The woman has a considerable development of the mammary 
 gland or breast. After childbirth this gland in the healthy woman 
 secretes milk for her child. The child first nourished by the mother's 
 blood is next nourished by her milk — always by her love. If this 
 function be suppressed, the recovery of the woman from childbirth is 
 delayed and endangered. The generative organs are slow in re- 
 
Sex, 3 1 
 
 establishing their old conditions if the child be not suckled. Many 
 ^female diseases start from this cause. The life of the child is also 
 endangered, the mortality in hand-fed and even wet-nursed children 
 being from ten to ninety per cent, greater than in those suckled by 
 their mothers. The mother loses also a great joy. The suckling of 
 her child will prove one of her greatest pleasures.' 
 
 The man has no mammary glands developed. This statement 
 is a general truth as to the male, but abnormal developments of these 
 glands in the male are on record, and even milk has been secreted by 
 the man ; but such departures from the rule are ever found in nature. 
 Men have been known with breasts of milk and women with thick 
 growing beards. 
 
 These exceptions do not vitiate the rule as to the development of 
 the sexes." 
 
 During the period of suckling, exposure, overwork, all excitement 
 or careless diet on the part of the mother will injure the babe and 
 may kill it. Such injudicious acts may also bring on abscess of the 
 breasts or other painful troubles in woman.^ 
 
 This function should be properly performed about nine months. 
 Childbirth and its immediate duties occupy about seventeen months, 
 and after this is complete still no one is so well fitted to care for the 
 helpless child as the mother for the first five or six years of life. 
 
 These necessary maternal duties prevent the woman from fully 
 taking part in the outside contest during the period of her greatest 
 vitality. If she do not perform those duties she exterminates her 
 individuality and life. So nature rids herself of useless incumbrance. 
 It is, indeed, difficult to see how the interests of the race can be 
 advanced by a return to the system of savages and barbarians, in 
 making the woman carry the burden of bread-gaining as well as that 
 of breeding. Many civilized people living in continual poverty 
 follow the savage system, somewhat mitigated however. These 
 people for the most part are peasants now, and have been peasants 
 in the past for an indefinite period of time. The tendency of civiliza- 
 tion and of advance, at least till recently, has been toward a libera- 
 tion of woman from the drive of drudgery. Under this advance she 
 has grown more beautiful in body, morals, and mind. Unfortu- 
 nately, humanity has been continually confronted with a point at 
 which the nerves are not balanced by the body, and the reproductive 
 powers of the races disappear. 
 
 ^ See Jos. B. Winter's articles, Medical Record. 
 
 ^ See on mammary glands, Leishman's System of Midwifery^ p. 154. 
 • Even so simple a matter as bathing on a full breast instead of after the 
 child has nursed may cause serious consequences. 
 
32 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 While it is true that an extreme point has sometimes been 
 reached in which idleness productive only of inanity has been the 
 lot of women, and in which neither body, morals, nor mind could 
 develop or even hold their own, it is not true that the liberation of 
 energy in women for reproduction, consequent upon their activities 
 being largely confined to the home, has proved unfavorable as a 
 whole to the interests of humanity. This higher nervous organiza- 
 tion in advanced societies doubtless demands more care in generation 
 or force for reproduction in their women than is required in less 
 mentally developed women. 
 
 The woman's rights agitation, and the change in the status, 
 education, and activities of women are all the results of a condition. 
 This condition has produced also the increasingly high standard of 
 life. Amongst the consequences are increasing difficulty of attain- 
 ment of the standard, progressive delay or avoidance of marriage, 
 and in marriage the avoidance of children. 
 
 These things hold women back from child-bearing. This, again, 
 takes away the main object of men in protecting them or caring for 
 them, as it also takes away much, if not all the necessity of their 
 being protected and provided for. All this to the extent that women 
 do not have children. The results we see before us. The high 
 standard of life is now difficult for man to attain to alone, without 
 providing for a wife or family. The women are therefore in increas- 
 ing numbers pushed out into the fight of life. Considerable 
 numbers, having nothing to hold them back, go voluntarily into 
 the world's contests — nay, often force themselves there. 
 
 These are usually the most intelligent and capable. The reason 
 for this seeking of interests in the drudgery of life is probably 
 threefold : 
 
 I St. Not having the glory of reproduction to occupy them, their 
 intelligent minds demand an interest. 
 
 2d. The frequent weakening in so-called highly educated women 
 of both the reproductive instinct and the reproductive power. 
 
 3d. The difficulty of satisfying a woman of superior intelligence 
 and high education in the matter of a husband. We perceive this from 
 the fact noted by Galton that the daughters of eminent men marry 
 less frequently than the sons, and consequentlj^ create fewer children. 
 
 The present movement in women's status will doubtless do good 
 in eliminating the extreme and disadvantageous idleness still found 
 in many women's lives, and the substitution for these errors of a 
 wholesome and safe series of activities in which body and mind may 
 be developed and the morals strengthened. It is difficult, however, 
 to reconcile the interest of the race with the idea of opening to 
 
Sex. 
 
 33 
 
 women all forms of life activity. Take politics for instance. Public 
 officers have terms ranging from one year to six, with the possibility 
 of re-election. In fact, a successful political life demands a consider- 
 able period of office-holding in one or another position of trust. 
 Many of the highest judges hold for life. Take the term of a 
 United States senator, six years, or take any of the terms of office 
 usually held before this dignity is reached. Is it possible to conceive 
 that a woman in political place could attend to her official public 
 duties as well when bearing children as when sterile ? Must she, 
 then, for the highest political achievement remain single, or, if 
 married, refuse conjugal intercourse, or use preventive measures, 
 which physicians unite in saying injure and undermine the health ? 
 If a woman be single when she enters public life she may many- 
 while in it, if no law provide to the contrary. If she marry, con- 
 ception and childbirth must be expected. We have already seen 
 that a woman with child could not safely take the risks which an 
 unfertilized woman or a man could. Neither can she that suckles 
 her young. The result of putting women in politics would be first 
 a recognition on their part of the handicap of child-bearing, and 
 second, a refusal of at least the majority of those going into it to 
 submit to the handicap. On the supposition that the most intel- 
 ligent women would take hold of politics, their probable failure, 
 as a rule, to perpetuate their superiorities to the next generation 
 in children, we must admit would be to the disadvantage of the race. 
 
 The brain of the high-class white women probably runs over the 
 average of her sex and race (44 oz.), but even if it does not, it is pro- 
 portionately superior to that of the negro male, which is 44 oz., with; 
 however, on his part superior bulk of flesh, which makes his brain 
 relatively inferior to the female white brain of the same weight. It is, 
 of course, unreasonable with these facts before us to assert that the 
 male negro is mentally better fitted to vote than the female of the 
 white race. It is also quite ridiculous to assert that a Madame de 
 Stael, George Sand, George Bliot, Mrs. Somerville, Mrs. Julia Ward 
 Howe, or a thousand others we could name are unfit to vote, or less 
 so than the ward striker or *' politician for plunder," we all are so 
 familiar with. 
 
 The policy, however, of throwing these women into careers dis- 
 couraging to matrimony or at least to child-bearing may well be 
 doubted. No activity could serve their country or humanity so well 
 as the perpetuation of their superiorities, not in ideals alone but in 
 LIFE. Were I a tyrant with absolute power, I should be inclined to 
 make it a legal obligation on every superior woman to breed. I be- 
 lieve that at present this is their moral obligation. 
 
34 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 In the nervous and brain organization of the two sexes, differences 
 are observable. As might be expected, knowledge of the internal 
 and invisible sex differences is much less complete than knowledge 
 of the external and visible differences. The whole sympathetic 
 nervous system is more developed in the female ; hence the greater 
 frequency of hysteria and kindred troubles in women. As it is pro- 
 portionately more developed in woman, so it is also more delicate 
 and more subject to be upset by shocks or rough usage. 
 
 The average weight of the brain in the white man in America is 
 a little over 49 oz., in woman a little over 44 oz.' The relationship is 
 as 100 to 90. In the lower races the difference between the brains of the 
 sexes is less than in the civilized. This is the case also in all sex- 
 ual variations. Even in the apes these sexual differences are greater 
 in the gorilla, orang, and chimpanzee, the highest members of the 
 order, than in the lower apes. 
 
 The following summary, from the Medical Record, of Sir James 
 Crichton-Browne's oration at the annual meeting of the Medical 
 Society of I^ondon is of interest : 
 
 The orator maintained that the growing tendency around us to ignore 
 intellectual distinctions between the sexes is unphysiological, and he adduced 
 numerous interesting facts in support of this view. The radical explanation 
 of sex, he said, was to be sought in what Michael Foster had called " the pro- 
 toplasmic movement," that is to say, in the integrative and disintegrative 
 changes of living matter. Anabolic and katabolic processes were manifold, 
 varied in their relative ascendency in different individuals, and were influenced 
 by environment, so that in tracing their operation through the animal king- 
 dom, qualifications and explanations were from time to time needful, but 
 subject to these it was everywhere obvious that the female was the outcome 
 and expression of predominant anabolism, and the male of predominant kata- 
 bolism. A study of the organic and functional, primary and secondary sexual 
 characters, of the normal development of the tissues, and of their pathological 
 modifications, made this evident, and a study of the emotional and intellectual 
 characteristics of men and women led to the same conclusion. Differences in 
 intellect implied cerebral differences, and first among cerebral differences be- 
 tween the sexes he would refer to mass and weight. Tables were produced 
 showing that, allowing for differences of stature, there was still an excess of 
 brain weight of more than an ounce in favor of the male. It could also be 
 shown from the tables that organic diseases, and the atrophic changes they 
 induced, lowered the normal difference between the male and female brain. 
 That the smaller size of the female brain was a fundamental sexual distinction 
 was made clear by the fact that the same difference in brain weight between 
 men and women had been found in savage races. Not only was the male 
 brain heavier than the female, but it had a wider range of variation in weight. 
 There were also grounds for believing that there was a difference in the balance 
 
 ' Flint's Text-Book of Human Physiology, p. 689. 
 
Sex. 35 
 
 of parts in the male and female brains respectively. Broca had declared that 
 the occipital lobes were more voluminous in the female, and Sir James Crichton- 
 Browne said that his own observations confirmed this conclusion and showed 
 that, while the frontal lobes were equally developed in both sexes, the parietal 
 lobes, which corresponded roughly with the motor area of Ferrier, were larger 
 in the male than in the female, and the occipital lobes, certainly sensory in 
 their functions, were larger in the female than in the male. The third brain 
 difference between the sexes was one of convolutional arrangement ; mere 
 ocular inspection would bring home to any one who diligently used it the 
 superior symmetry of the female brain, due to its comparative poverty in 
 secondary g>'ri. He had also found the specific gravity of the gray matter gen- 
 erally lower in the female than in the male brain. Another momentous diflfer- 
 ence was in vascular supply. In an investigation carried on jointly with Dr. 
 Sydney Martin, he had found that the diameter of the internal carotid and 
 vertebral arteries, taken together, was slightly greater in the male than in the 
 female. When the smaller size of the female brain was taken into account, it 
 appeared that the female brain received a larger supply of blood in proportion 
 to its mass than the male brain did, but it must be remembered that the blood 
 was somewhat poorer in quality than that going to the male brain. The dis- 
 tribution of blood to the brain in the two sexes differed considerably. The 
 internal carotid arteries, with their great branches, the anterior and middle 
 cerebral arteries, supplying the supra-orbital convolutions and island of Reil, 
 the gyrus fornicatus, the Rolandic area, the angular gyrus, and the first tem- 
 poro-sphenoidal lobules, were much larger in the male than in the female brain, 
 but the vertebral arteries, which supplied the occipital and temporo-sphenoidal 
 lobules, were larger in the female, and the basilar artery, which was practically 
 a continuation of the vertebrals, was also larger in the female brain. The pos- 
 terior communicating arteries were incapable of adjusting the balance between 
 the direct currents of the carotid and vertebral arteries, and the result of the 
 difference mentioned was that the anterior region of the brain was compara- 
 tively more copiously irrigated with blood in men, and the posterior in women. 
 The region of the brain which in men was most richly flushed with blood was 
 that which was concerned, we had reason to believe, in volition, cognition, 
 and ideo-muscular processes ; while the region which in women was most vas- 
 cular was that which was mainly concerned in sensory functions, and we thus 
 saw that there was a relation between the size of the cerebral arteries and what 
 observation had taught us as to the intellectual and emotional differences of 
 the sexes. Differences in brain structure and function had a special pathologi- 
 cal significance at the period when sexual divergence was taking place most 
 rapidly, and when education was being pushed forward with most vigor. The 
 orator then proceeded to speak of the methods of education. He said he did 
 not hesitate to affirm that overpressure was rampant in high schools for girls 
 in this country, though there were those who believed that it was a medical 
 n^yth. He protested against home evening lessons, and also against girls pro- 
 ceeding to school without having first had an adequate morning meal. He 
 quoted in conclusion, as an argument against the equal education of the sexes, 
 the remark that " what was decided among the prehistoric protozoa cannot be 
 annulled by Act of Parliament," and he said that the essential difference be- 
 tween male and female could not be obliterated at a sweep of the pen by any 
 Senatus Academicus. 
 
36 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 In the whole matter of cranial capacity, in absolute brain weight 
 or in its relative size to the rest of the body, we have but a partial 
 and general guide that in our present knowledge is at least unre- 
 liable in all minor details or differences. The elephant has a greater 
 brain weight than man, and a number of birds and animals have 
 brains relatively larger to their bodies than man. The brain of the 
 infant is larger in comparison to the body than that of the man. 
 The proportion of the brain of the savage to that of civilized man in 
 a rough, general way is about 5 to 6, but the difference in intel- 
 lectual force is more nearly, as Galton has said, i to 1,000. 
 
 The female brain, considered relatively as to the whole body 
 weight, is very nearly in the same ratio as that of the male. 
 
 All these things show a lack of complete connection either as to 
 absolute brain size or comparative brain size in intellectual force. 
 
 In taking up cranial capacity, for instance, we would find the 
 Chinese below the Esquimaux, and the neolithic man of some 
 districts above the modem Parisian. We can hardly believe this to 
 be correct. In America we find the negro cranial capacity, measured 
 while the race was still under the influence of slavery, to have been 
 83 cu. cen., or less than that of the native African ; other measure- 
 ments make the difference greater in favor of the Afirican. We gen- 
 erally consider the American negro the more mentally developed. 
 Still slavery, by taking away individual self-reliance and initiative, 
 and by thus leaving part of the brain faculties unused, may have 
 actually diminished them. 
 
 Races. Mean. 
 
 English 96 
 
 Germans \ 
 
 Anglo-Americans / ^ " 
 
 Arabs 89 "] 
 
 Greco-Egyptians of the Catacombs . . 88 I 
 
 Irish 87 I 
 
 Malays 86 J 
 
 Persians 1 
 
 Armenians ^ f • 94 75 19 
 
 Circassians i o^ j 
 
 Iroquois | ^S 
 
 ^h^ro^^es ^ • '°4 7o 34 
 
 Shoshones J 
 
 African Negroes \ « 
 
 Polynesians \ ^ 
 
 Chinese \ g 
 
 Creole Negroes of North America j" • • « 
 Hindoos S 
 
 Ancient Egyptians of Catacombs >■ . . 80 
 Fellahs j 
 
 Mexicans 79 
 
 Peruvians "j 
 
 Australians \ 75 
 
 Hottentots I 
 
 Max. 
 
 MIN. 
 
 DiEF. 
 
 105 
 
 91 
 
 14 
 
 J114 
 
 70 
 
 14 
 
 82 
 
 15 
 
 98 
 
 84 
 
 14 
 
 
 74 
 
 23 
 
 97 
 
 78 
 
 19 
 
 
 68 
 
 29 
 
 99 
 
 65 
 
 34 
 
 94 
 
 82 
 
 2 
 
 91 
 
 70 
 
 21 
 
 89 
 
 73 
 
 16 
 
 91 
 
 77 
 
 14 
 
 96 
 
 68 
 
 28 
 
 96 
 
 66 
 
 30 
 
 92 
 
 67 
 
 25 
 
 lOI 
 
 58 
 
 47 
 
 83 
 
 68 
 
 15 
 
 83 
 
 63 
 
 20 
 
Sex. 37 
 
 Broca's measurements of a vast series of Parisians' skulls would 
 lend color to this view, for the cranial capacity increases with the 
 intellectual manifestations of the various epochs examined. A 
 curious thing in these cranial measurements is the way in which the 
 maxima and minima of races cross into each other. This shows the 
 importance of careful selection in marriage, not only as to race, but 
 as to individuals. Morton's table (see opposite page) showing the 
 various race cranial capacities is considered the best made. Its 
 surprises are worth examination. 
 
 We must be satisfied to say at present that while brain size is a 
 general guide to brain capacity, it is after all the brain quality which 
 is most influential in intellectual manifestations. 
 
 The brain texture is claimed to be different in the sexes. The 
 specific gravity of the brain in man is heavier than in woman. The 
 convolutions are more extensive and the gray matter relatively in 
 larger proportion in the man. 
 
 The fissure of Rolando separates the upper or reasoning part of 
 the brain from the lower or emotional part. If we take the entire 
 length of the brain to be loo, there will be found in woman 31.3 parts 
 in front of the upper end of this fissure, while in man there will be 
 43.9 parts. Thus the emotional is more developed in woman's brain, 
 the reason more in man's. 
 
 Woman is the more delicate, refined, sympathetic, and loving. 
 She it is whose intuitions seem to come from Heaven, so tender and 
 so true are they. It is to her, this delicate and loving being, that 
 the child-bearing and child-nursing function is given. The woman 
 lives for others, for her children. Her body, her nerves, her brain, 
 are perfect for this glory of motherhood. 
 
 Nature has said it — woman in reproduction carries the race beyond 
 the clutch of Death. Man with heavy bones, powerful muscles, no 
 recurring wound like the ^%% bursting from the ovary ; no uterus to 
 bear the babe, no breast to suckle the young ; large-brained, coarse, 
 and strong, — it is he who is to make the fight in the hard world, to 
 protect and support the mother and babes, both helpless for so long. 
 The decree of nature is plain. *' He who runs may read." There 
 is no inferiority of the sexes. Both have grand duties to perform 
 that, if well done, are full of joy and pleasure. The man cannot 
 enter the field of woman. Woman enters the field of man only as an 
 inferior, no longer a woman, nor yet a man. 
 
 Perfection is that each should be in his or her place. It is there 
 that each can work best. The glorious function of woman handicaps 
 her unalterably for anything else. Nature's decree to her is to bear 
 children, for this she is made. Can you violate a law of nature 
 
38 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 without paying the penalty ? Jump from a housetop— will the law of 
 gravity forgive you ? Take poison — will its deadly action spare you ? 
 Cut open your heart — will it go on beajiing ? So the woman who 
 violates the laws of nature laid down for her will be neither healthy 
 nor happy. 
 
 So also the man who violates these laws, who does not take wise 
 measures to reproduce and improve, will be neither healthy nor happy. 
 It may be said here that the defects of society and the degeneracy of 
 marriage are more due to the ignorance, idleness, and crime of man 
 than they are to the shortcomings of woman. The errors of the 
 women are in large measure due to the initiative of the men. 
 
 The accumulated experience of mankind crystallized in the customs 
 of society follow in a general way the law of nature in regard to the 
 relation and position of the sexes and are not to be lightly cast aside. 
 The married man has better prospect of life than the bachelor. The 
 wife-mother has equally a better prospect of life to about the same 
 extent over her single sister. Thus we see that avoidance of maternity 
 on the ground of its danger to life, a doctrine making nature a fool, 
 is the result of ignorance. 
 
 Some occupy themselves with the justice of the position of woman 
 in nature. It is an idle waste of breath. We might with as much 
 reason occupy ourselves with the justice of the size of the mouse as 
 compared with the immensity of the elephant, the rapidity of the 
 horse compared to the slowness of the snail, the limitation of the 
 cow's diet to grass and seed compared to the omnivorous capacity of 
 the bear. With equal utility we might discuss the justice of the 
 destiny of the graceful porpoise playing for hours with its mates about 
 a ship— intelligent, social, and interesting, condemned to live in the 
 sea, while the ugly, poisonous snake glides about amongst the beau- 
 tiful glades of the ever charming land. After deciding the destiny 
 of the porpoise to be unjust, we might, if fools enough, decree that it 
 should be placed on land and proceed forthwith to drag the poor 
 animal-fish out of the water only to see it linger in agony, flapping 
 awkwardly and fruitlessly about until an early death came to relieve 
 it. So we might go on talking of the justice of the delicate flower 
 being the prey of the caterpillar, the caterpillar of the bird, the bird 
 the game of the wild cat, and the wild cat the game of man. All this 
 would be in the air, and the arguments about it so many balloons of 
 gas that have only to be pricked to collapse in a formless mass while 
 the stink of them rises to Heaven. 
 
 Most of the discussions of sex by the women's rights people are 
 of this character. They overlook or defy nature and they would 
 pull the woman out of her element willing or unwilling with 
 
Sex. 39 
 
 the fact under their noses that the mass of women out of their 
 sphere, through ignorance or a hard fate, are, by their weakness in 
 an unnatural position, forced to inferiority. They are women, not 
 men. When they fight man there may be one here and there found 
 to hold their own, but the mass are driven to the ragged edge or into 
 the gutter. 
 
 These remarks apply especially to the results of this movement 
 in discouraging marriage and in promoting prevention of conception 
 or inducing abortion, so that the woman can fill some supposed high 
 destiny. By these means in many places the American population 
 has lost its power of reproduction and is not even able to hold its own. 
 No reflection is intended on a woman's learning how to support her- 
 self, or in her doing worldly work, or in her following any outside 
 career so that it does not interfere with the grander destiny of 
 maternity. 
 
 There is no organized movement to induce men to avoid procrea- 
 tion, but the drift of society has for some time been in this direction. 
 The bachelor's life has now fewer drawbacks than it has ever had. 
 Society tolerates sexual promiscuity on the part of the male in this 
 country as it has not done before. The standard of life is high and 
 difficult to maintain a family in, while club life enables a single man 
 to meet the demands of the times with comparative ease. The men 
 consequently shirk marriage, and when married shirk the responsi- 
 bilities its high and grand creative work imposes. In historical 
 civilizations, dissipation and degradation have always commenced 
 with the men and have thence communicated to the women. When 
 the women sink into that slough of despond — sexual lewdness and 
 avoidance of maternity — the intelligent or ruling class disappears and 
 so the civilization ends for want of perpetuation of the minds and 
 morals that made it. 
 
 Small families is one of the first signs of this condition, and then 
 come no families at all amongst the upper classes. 
 
 The time may arrive when the best interests of humanity and 
 progress will be served by small families. It is true that in nature 
 the rule is, as complexity increases so does fertility decrease. As 
 yet, however, there are no indications that a small family is advan- 
 tageous to man in the struggle for immortality and advance by the 
 child. In a small family, one or two children, the chances of exter- 
 mination by death of these before procreation has blessed them, or of 
 sterility or impotence, etc., are greater than in a large family, but 
 besides this there is not only this relative advantage to the large 
 family, but the individuals are also superior to those of the small 
 families. Only sons and daughters are rarely celebrated. As a rule, 
 
40 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 they are physically and morally below the average of their class, they 
 are more often childless, and at this time they are a sign of weakness 
 in the breed and should be avoided in marriage selection. 
 
 Woman's present emancipation as compared with her condition in 
 the past is a result of a drift of society that has overcome great 
 opposition. To ciu*tail woman's freedom as it exists in well regulated 
 families now is a reactionary policy not to be thought of. A man, 
 however, in Solomon's time, or even Solomon himself, might have 
 considered the female freedom of to-day quite incompatible with the 
 security of the family and the perpetuation of the best minds of the 
 race. So doubtless it would have been if suddenly given without 
 preparation to the women of the harem. 
 
 We to-day are doubtless equally unable to properly judge what 
 means can be best availed of to at once improve woman, and improve 
 the race in children born from her loins. Consequently no rules are 
 laid down as to the advisability of any of the measures proposed to 
 improve women. 
 
 Voting and political duty is now the immediate goal of their 
 champions. This has been tried in numerous places from the wild 
 tribes of the Amoor to the American Territories of Wyoming, Utah, 
 and Washington. It does not seem to have improved society or the 
 condition of women. Polygamy in Utah, for instance, had nothing 
 to fear from female suffrage while it lasted. General female suffrage 
 seems likely to prevail before very long. Its effects can then be 
 studied. In all these details as to woman's sphere, the benefit of the 
 doubt should be given to cautiously conducted change, demanding 
 only one conservative stronghold, the security of reproduction. The 
 women who have gone out into the fight of life, emancipated, have 
 in many cases fallen by the way. Thus while in the higher classes 
 of women a freedom from supervision is allowed, which has been 
 found consistent with perfect chastity or fidelity in marriage, on the 
 other hand it must be admitted that under this system there exists a 
 vast army of prostitutes, not found under the old and primitive pa- 
 triarchal regime. But again, every one with experience seems to 
 agree that harem women have less capacity to protect their chastity 
 themselves than our own women, and appear ready often at the first 
 occasion to let it go. We can thus perceive that the necessity, so 
 plain, that the man must have a security in the paternity of his 
 children to insure progress by the protection of the mother and 
 young during their increasing period of helplessness going with their 
 increasing improvement, has not suffered by the gradually enlarged 
 freedom of the woman. On the contrary, an increased self-reliance 
 has improved the female, or most of those, at least, who breed. 
 
Sex, 
 
 41 
 
 It is not so many centuries ago that the Anglo-Saxon virgin could 
 no more go out alone, where she would meet men, than the Conti- 
 nental lady virgin can now. In morality the English or American 
 g^rl will not suffer in comparison with any others or with those of 
 the past, and the married women at least with the same religious 
 training are or were more reliable in England and America than in 
 the more conservative countries of Europe. The word were is used, 
 because it must be admitted that the moral tone of both England and 
 America in regard to the chastity of men and women is lower than it 
 was from thirty to fifty years ago. It is still true that we have no 
 condition in our race similar to that in some of the Austrian provin- 
 ces, where nearly half the births are illegitimate, but on the other 
 hand the prevention of conception or induction of abortion in America 
 gives us no room to boast. Of the two, the illegitimate child or no 
 child, the first, of course, would be the choice of every one believing 
 in the immortality the child gives. 
 
 The tone of morality and regard for female chastity has gone 
 through many ups and downs, but through it all there appears a 
 history of improvement. In the past an army generally committed 
 rape on conquered women. In the earliest times they either mas- 
 sacred the whole conquered population or used them for slaves, the 
 women being destined for the sexual indulgence of the victors. Now 
 no one would think of expecting such acts from a conquering army. 
 So a woman of the Turks floating about unguarded can not be deemed 
 by them virtuous, while we find our highest-class women more relia- 
 ble as to chastity than any experienced person has ever found the 
 women of the harem with all their guards. 
 
 Progress may continue in this line, in fact it must, and the time 
 will doubtless come when a father can have implicit faith in the 
 chastity and fidelity of the mother of his children under any circum- 
 stances. Progress may go so far, that a man and woman unmarried 
 may go to sleep in the same bed without any more suspicion of im- 
 proper conduct than now exists when they walk together. Human 
 nature, however, must change before this can be a received opinion, 
 and we should consequently avoid too much temptation. 
 
 A woman who is single, childless, and making the fight of the 
 world, is certainly not doing that which gives the largest amount of 
 health, happiness, bodily pleasure, or of material results. 
 
 A general review either of the past or of the present shows that 
 thus far in the evolution of society a position of women with ambi- 
 tion or duties inconsistent with maternity has not been and is not 
 favorable. We find women soldiers, not only individually as Joan of 
 Arc, but collectively as in the Amazons of the past and in the present 
 
42 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 female guards of the King of Dahomey, vowed to chastity. Under 
 such systems the women do not gain power, nor is the strength of the 
 society made superior. 
 
 We find women, as has been said, exercising the privileges of 
 citizens, as voting in barbarous communities as amongst the tribes 
 on the Amoor River, also in more civilized places as amongst the 
 Mormon settlements of Utah, in the school elections in Massachusetts, 
 etc. We find women engaged in general industry to the same extent 
 as man in many primitive societies, and generally amongst savages 
 the women do the work w^hile the men look on. With many such 
 tribes the women seem now to be constitutionally industrious, while 
 the men are constitutionally lazy.* In the higher types of slavery, 
 such as that formerly prevalent in the United States, the slave women 
 were obliged to work to the extent of their powers. 
 
 In all these cases the productive power of the society has not 
 been increased nor has progress been as rapid as in societies where 
 the superior woman bore children more generally than has ever been 
 recorded in societies where they take part in public, military, civil, 
 or industrial affairs. These create ambitions inconsistent with 
 maternity. 
 
 In our own day we can make a comparison between England and 
 France. In the first until very recently women have had compara- 
 tively little opportunity in engaging in the outside fight. This is 
 especially true of the highest classes of women. In France, on the 
 contrary, the women have for a considerable time played an import- 
 ant part in both politics and industry. Their political influence as 
 court favorites and as centres of literature or politics is a matter of 
 history. Their industrial influence may be observed generally. A 
 Frenchman and wife unite their capital for business and the wife 
 does her full share of the management. Such is not so generally 
 the case in England. 
 
 We find upon examination that the per capita production of the 
 whole population is greatest in England ; per capita commerce 
 ditto, per capita consumption ditto, per capita service of money 
 ditto, children to family ditto, general birth-rate ditto, stability of 
 government ditto ; achievements of great men, as discovery of circu- 
 lation of blood by Harvey, power of steam by Watts, law of gravita- 
 tion by Newton, desent of man by Darwin, social evolution by 
 Spencer, political economy by Adam Smith, etc., etc., ditto. 
 
 France has had an ambitious colonial policy for 200 years T\dth a 
 strong naval power to back it up, still there is but one real colony of 
 
 ^ See Spencer's Sociology. 
 
Sex. 
 
 43 
 
 Frenchmen, that of lyower Canada, and in that the social conditions 
 and position of women are entirely different from those in France ; 
 while England taking up the colonial policy later has occupied large 
 portions of the world with people from its own loins and with its own 
 language and development. The native population of France is 
 slowly retrogressive, being maintained by immigration like the native 
 population of New England. In forty-two departments in France 
 the deaths exceed the births, while the population of England is over- 
 flowing. In the one case there is scarcely internal and native repro- 
 ductive power for the continuance of the French people, while in the 
 other there is a surplus for the peaceful conquest of the world. 
 
 In our own country we may perceive already the effects of an un- 
 timely or too great change in the ambitions and duties of women. In 
 those sections such as New England, where the movement is greatest, 
 greater probably than anywhere in the world, there also is the repro- 
 ductive power of the native population weakest, weaker, for instance, 
 than amongst the native whites in the South under a more unfavorable 
 climate for this race. So also in those classes (unfortunately the 
 superior ones) where what are called woman's rights are most be- 
 lieved in and lived up to, we find equally that the females are unable 
 or unwilling to breed to an equal extent with the females of immi- 
 grants, such as those mockingly called the Pope's Irish, the Canucks, 
 or French Canadians, etc. Should the present disposition or capaci- 
 ties of our own native females remain the same in this respect as it 
 now is, the laugh will soon be on the other side — in fact, is fast getting 
 there now. 
 
 In New England, as well as in nearly every northern State, it is 
 the mentally weakest, most ignorant, and least developed who are, 
 speaking generally, doing the breeding and fixing the character of the 
 next and of the succeeding generations. This is certainly not to 
 the interest of the nation, of the race, or of humanity. 
 
 The Catholic religion is thought to play a prominent part in the \ 
 continued breeding of its communicants, and as far as ofl&cial precept 
 goes it evidently does so ; but as the Catholic population of France 
 is rotten to the core with prevention, abortion, and infanticide, it can- 
 not be the only cause. Whatever the cause of sterility is, nowhere 
 do we see women's rights so ardently preached as in certain sections 
 of America, and nowhere in the whole world do we see the birth- 
 rate so low as amongst the native Americans in the most infected 
 sections. It is also in America and amongst our own race that we 
 see the greatest crimes against nature and reproduction in both sexes 
 anywhere known. Nowhere else is abortion, infant murder, mastur- 
 bation, and the prevention of conception so general. Where these 
 
44 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 crimes are most frequent there also is the woman's rights' movement 
 strongest. These errors are not so much due to women's rights per- 
 haps as are women's rights due to a diseased condition, the common 
 parent of both these tendencies to steriHty . 
 
 The past history of mankind shows us women in prominent posi- 
 tions or equal to man in the outside fight in primitive and in some 
 advanced societies. These conditions thus far have not proved fav- 
 orable to progress. The reason doubtless is that the superior women 
 at a certain point of intelligence refuse to breed, and the best of the 
 society is in that way exterminated. 
 
 A higher and better position for woman, in which she has more 
 dignity and receives more consideration than in any primitive time, 
 is a universal accompaniment of progress beyond the pastoral-patri- 
 archal type. Before that stage woman's position in progress was, 
 from a relatively equal position to man, to one of greater subordina- 
 tion to him, out of which change came permanent marriage and 
 security of paternity. 
 
 We may say, in a general way, that a. woman who is not or can- 
 not be a mother has neither the perfection of hope, health, or hap- 
 piness. While, on the other hand, the mother, the woman in her 
 sphere as nature has decreed, is in the mass happy, healthy, and 
 superior, — I may say, grand with the aureole of maternity sanctifying 
 her, for the mother is a "holy of holies " and a fountain of life. 
 
 The comparison to be made in every-day life one might think 
 would be enough without very deep inquiry into the science of the 
 matter as to what woman's happiest sphere is. On the one hand, 
 the work-girl, by no law of man, but by the law of nature, is weak 
 in the outside fight. She is forced to the lowest wages of her voca- 
 tion. Always on the verge alone on her way to work and on her 
 return to a lonely room, to what temptation is she not exposed ? If 
 she will cede her virtue she can be in affluence, if pretty, in a mo- 
 ment. The money may support some poor relative, she thinks. 
 The first step taken, and the doors of a hell in this world have 
 opened for her. 
 
 Promiscuous intercourse soon brings inflammation, maternity 
 becomes impossible, she is no longer a woman, only a slop-pail of 
 infamy. What degradation there is in a prostitute, what despair, 
 no one who has not seen them in their early decay can tell ! For 
 them death strikes off" a chain. How will you blame the poor child ? 
 She is so delicate, sympathetic, full of emotion, ready yearning to 
 love, with the monthly periods when continuous work is wellnigh 
 impossible. She is in competition and contest with rough, hard 
 man. She is a child of hope and trust, unprotected, homeless, un- 
 
Sex. 
 
 45 
 
 husbanded. Can you expect her to starve both body and heart for 
 the good opinion of a society that will not know her ? 
 
 Here, on the one side, you have the woman, as we see, thrown 
 into the relentless contest of life. How many fall a prey to shame, 
 that living death ; alas, an evening walk in the streets of any city, 
 thick in fallen women as autumn is in fallen leaves, will but too 
 sadly tell. 
 
 Let us take the other condition of women in our midst : married, 
 a mother, queen of her home; her lisping children at her knee. 
 The husband, fighting the bitter battles outside, comes back with joy 
 to his home. His little triumphs in the world are nothing to the 
 triumph she has borne him and achieved in immortalizing him and 
 herself in their children. Nothing that he has, nothing that he has 
 done, does he consider of value compared to one of them. 
 
 Such a woman, as Michelet says, is a religion. So tender, so 
 true, so loving, so loved. Sweet cares of the wife to love, soothe, 
 and encourage her husband, and see his energy renewed at her dear 
 touch. Sweet cares of the mother to nurse her child, to watch its 
 powers unfold, with the devotion, tenderness, and insight alone pos- 
 sessed by woman. She travels on the path of life hand in hand with 
 her children, happy and glorious. Oh, holy mother, they who 
 would raise their finger to prevent your joyous destiny are full of 
 folly, full of crime ! 
 
 I do not wish to be understood as advising a prohibition of woman's 
 entry into any sphere of life. On the contrary, I believe fully in the 
 utilization by women of all their powers, physical and mental, both 
 for their own improvement and for that of the race. But I hold that 
 all such secondary activities should always be subordinated to the 
 one great function of woman — child-bearing. Nor do I overlook the 
 fact that procreation is the one great function of man also, to which 
 everything should be secondary. 
 
 Some men and some women have an idea that there are duties in 
 life and acts, such as teaching or creating works of art, literature, 
 etc., which are grander and of more value to the race than the cre- 
 ating of human beings in their own image. This idea I believe to 
 be erroneous. I have sufficiently set forth the individual aspects of 
 this matter in other chapters ; a few words, therefore, on the interests 
 of the race will be sufficient here. 
 
 In the lowest geological state in which evidences of man are 
 found there is unity in this, that all implements credited to man are 
 of the most primitive types. In succeeding strata, while these primi- 
 tive types often persist, higher and higher types take possession, and 
 we have thus in the earth's crust a history which demonstrates man 
 
46 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 to have progressed from a race or races uniformly lower than any- 
 known to-day, to our present highest civilization. In this era, how- 
 ever, all have not come to the highest plane. I^arge bodies of human 
 beings, even in the most developed countries, are far below the 
 highest men and women in brain power. Brain power is the line on 
 which humanity has improved. This power depends largely on 
 brain size, convolutions, etc. Taking the first two we find that in 
 the primitive tribes of our day both brain weight and convolutions 
 are deficient as compared to these conditions in the highest men. 
 
 Amongst Andaman Islanders and Australians the convolutions 
 of the brain are comparatively simple, while the total weight of the 
 male brain has been noted as low as 38 oz., and will probably 
 average about 42 oz. In the male negro in America it is 44 oz. In 
 the male American the average brain weight is a little over 49 oz. 
 The most primitive savage has no mental grasp compared to ours ; 
 he cannot count over five ; his language has but few words, and his 
 numerals give out after three or five, and are replaced by the word 
 "many.'* The negro, a few steps higher, shows his deficiency in 
 being unable to cope with the white man. He has not yet become 
 a composer or an inventor of importance. 
 
 Now the history of this development of the highest types of brain 
 power gives every indication of having occupied a long period of 
 time, probably tens of thousands of years, perhaps hundreds of thou- 
 sands of years. The point that I make is that no mere book, statue, 
 picture, invention, work of charity or philanthropy, possible to be 
 done by an individual man or woman, can compensate the race for 
 the loss through non-reproduction of the brain developed through 
 ages of time to the capacity of such a work. In other words, it is 
 more important to the race to hold by reproduction the brain of an 
 Aristotle, Shakespeare, or Spencer, than to have the works they 
 have done, and to toil through ages more to develop their powers 
 again in developed brains. 
 
 To the highest type of brain all human things are possible. As 
 the brain is inferior in structure, so its manifestations must be in- 
 ferior. It is probable that the lower types of brain, even amongst 
 the developed races, would require thousands of years to reach the 
 highest brain power in the same races. These considerations should 
 accentuate the importance of careful selection in breeding amongst 
 men and clearly show the value to the race of perpetuating superior 
 brain development in children. 
 
 A brainy woman can do no work to compensate the world for the 
 extinction of her brain in sterility. It is at sterility that the line 
 must be drawn. 
 

 There are still other differences in the constitution of the two 
 sexes. As the woman has the highest capacity of devotion in the 
 use of the reproductive power, as she has the tenderest and most 
 spiritualized capacity for the highest love, so, unfortunately, she 
 also has the capacity of prostituting these powers, and of sinking 
 into an abyss of infamy deeper than is possible for man or any 
 animal. 
 
 With man the use of the reproductive powers depends not only 
 on consent and the will, but also on desire or instinct. He must be 
 attracted, he must have passion. This is not the case with woman. 
 Consent is enough. As a corollary of this we find another difference. 
 A man cannot be forced to the sexual act ; a woman may be. Thus 
 if a man, we will suppose, was in the power of some Asiatic despot, 
 and was given the choice of immediate death or of having a child by 
 a woman loathsome with some horrid disease, her face sloughing 
 away with cancer and revolting to smell, look upon, or be near, he 
 might wish to save his life, he might be willing to prostitute his 
 powers by taking the alternative proposed, and still he could not, — it 
 would be impossible. With a woman it would be different : offered 
 a similar alternative — death or to have a child by some misery of a 
 man, — she by the mere will could consent to the act, receive the man, 
 take his impress, carry him for nine months, his blood in her 
 through the child, and then bear into the world his diseased image 
 to martyrize her maternal love, and she still stamped in her very 
 nature for life with the man. 
 
 The man must be the head and protector of the breed and family. 
 For though he can sink low in the use of the reproductive powers, 
 it is impossible for him to become a prostitute, or to sink to the 
 depths possible to the female. 
 
 A man in youthful levity, with untrustworthy companions, may 
 be led off, take too much stimulant or narcotic, and pass the night 
 insensible and no one knows where. The next morning he rises full 
 of headache and repentance. If there is good stuff in him he deter- 
 mines to do such acts no more, and that is the end of it. His repro- 
 ductive powers are safe. A young girl with the same liberty may 
 be similarly misled, but how terrible may be the result ! Her 
 maidenhood ravished, her purity gone, her maternity capacity 
 seized by the fertilizing germ of some drunken pimp, perhaps out- 
 raged again and again ! 
 
 Again, a boy or man passing in a lonely place may be set upon 
 by a band of robbers, wounded, knocked down, his money taken; 
 he rises, his cuts are bound up ; in a little while it is as though 
 nothing had happened. The girl or woman thus lonely and at- 
 
48 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 tacked may lose more than money, more than consciousness, more 
 than life. She may, and as a rule when so exposed does, lose honor 
 and purity. She may carry from the place the germ of some repul- 
 sive life. 
 
 If a doctor were required at the dead of night, and had to be sent 
 for through a country infested by roughs, whom would you send, 
 your son or your daughter, your boy or your girl ? The question 
 answers itself. The girl, being exposed to so much greater risks so 
 deadly to fall under, and she being, besides, so much the better 
 nurse, the boy would be sent by the judicious parent, while the girl, 
 with her sympathy and her tenderness, watched with the sick. So 
 it should be in all life matters. From these causes we can clearly 
 perceive that what is proper for a man or boy may be highly im- 
 proper in a woman or girl, — not merely by reason of the prejudices 
 of society, but by reason of the imminent peril some situations have 
 for the sex. A woman or girl ought not to go about alone in rough 
 or doubtful places. Protection and succor should never be far away 
 from the female. 
 
 To recapitulate, we find man the stronger of the sexes. The 
 woman is the more delicate and sympathetic. She has smaller 
 bones, less muscle, has less power mentally and physically for organ- 
 ization and the contest of life, while, on the other hand, she has a 
 larger vitality and development of the sympathetic nervous system. 
 If she remain a virgin, she has, during the period of her human 
 force, fourteen to forty (Anglo-Saxons), the menses at least once a 
 month. The menses cease upon an average several years sooner in 
 the virgin than in the mother of a family. This indicates that the 
 vitality of the mother, instead of being diminished by childbirth, 
 has been increased. 
 
 If she enters man's occupations, this function often increases in 
 violence and frequency, or becomes altogether suppressed, with ac- 
 companying general nervous derangement. Thus, for some days in 
 every month, she is at a disadvantage in any contest. It must be 
 clear that even when she refuses or cannot enter the career of a 
 mother, she still remains at a disadvantage for any other. If she 
 perform the duties of a mother, that is enough of greatness. She is 
 by this function handicapped for outside occupations, for child- 
 bearing must take place in the period of greatest vitality, when the 
 battle of life is hottest. 
 
 Women must have children or farewell to the race. Children or 
 extermination, such is our alternative. Women cannot have chil- 
 dren and also fight men in the contest of life ; the handicap is too 
 enormous. The logical conclusion is beyond escape. Women for 
 
Sex, 49 
 
 the home, men for the fight. Women should not be deceived by the 
 foolish into thinking this destiny inferior. A correct measure in this 
 regard is influence. Woman as mother in the home not only influ- 
 ences her own time, but the future through the child ; for the child 
 is almost always what its mother makes it — that is, as far as any 
 influence outside of its own special individuality after birth can 
 make it. 
 
 In infancy the impressions are most permanent. Those impres- 
 sions come from the mother, or should do so. Thus she holds the 
 generation that follows her, and has really the superior position, if 
 there is such an one. The contest of life, where the man belongs, is 
 nothing but a quantity of drudgery and detail subsidiary entirely to 
 the main point of perpetuating the race through the child. As 
 woman has most to do with this, the main and essential question of 
 life, she again may be said to have the superior position. 
 
 lyct no woman be led willingly to the slaughter. For her to fight 
 with man is a losing fight, ridiculous and useless. She should take 
 the hand the strong man offers when she is true to her duties, and 
 go with him. He for the battle, she for the serene home. Let her 
 be earnest, loving, and virtuous, and she will not lack a man to do 
 his part. Exceptions do occur where the woman is all she should 
 be, but the man is wanting. Such a situation is indeed unfortu- 
 nate. The great number of unhappy unions of men and women 
 is due to the ignorance of the man and woman of the grandeur of 
 their functions, and of the peculiar difference of sphere of man and 
 woman. 
 
 A discreet, virtuous, and loving woman, who has knowledge, 
 will, as a rule, have a happy home, and a happy home contains for 
 woman more possibility of joy and of greatness than any other place. 
 The home is created by woman, defended and supported by man. 
 
 What the future may have in store for us no one knows. We 
 must from the limitations of our faculties be guided by what little 
 we know of the past and present. From this point of view there is 
 nothing to indicate that society can even exist with women unable 
 or unwilling to bear children. There is nothing in the history of 
 nature to give any color to the belief that the reproduction of the 
 race is going to be less complex and force-requiring than it is. 
 There is nothing to show that women can be emancipated from 
 child-bearing. 
 
 An examination of nature would lead to quite a contrary view. 
 Development has been from the simple to the complex and from 
 generalized functions of matter to specialized ones. The first and 
 simplest life reproduces by division and is sexless. All the fimc- 
 
50 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 tions of this earliest life seem interchangeable. In some low forms of 
 life, by no means the most primitive, the living being may be turned 
 inside out, when the stomach performs the duties of the skin and the 
 skin performs the work of the stomach. 
 
 From such simple forms we see life becoming more developed only 
 as it becomes more complex and specialized. One of the first 
 specializations of function both in plants and animals was sex. At 
 first reproduction went on without sex, so life went on without 
 specialized organs. Thus a living being of the most primitive type 
 might be cut in two and each part live on as though nothing unusual 
 had occurred. Developed human beings cannot thus part from their 
 specialized organs. The loss of the liver, the kidneys, of the lungs, 
 of the heart, is in either case at once fatal. Equally the loss of the 
 function of child-bearing by women would sweep humanity from the 
 earth in a hundred years. 
 
 Development seems to necessitate the passage of advanced indi- 
 viduals or classes through all previous stages of progress before 
 becoming useful in their new sphere. Thus the young of man starts 
 with the spore, goes through the ^%% period, resembles a fish, then a 
 dog, then a monkey, then the lowest intellectual man, and so on up 
 to the highest standard he is born to, passing meantime through 
 innumerable and inseparable stages of change. 
 
 From this cause the young of man having the most ground to 
 pass over as compared to the young of any other creature, is by far 
 the longest time helpless and dependent. 
 
 Early specialization in reproduction shows us the eggs dropped 
 out and fertilized externally as in the fishes. Next we see eggs ferti- 
 lized in the female, but the ^%% laid and left to care for itself ; the 
 young reptile coming from the ^%% to the warm sand being fully able 
 to care for itself. In birds the ^^'g is laid and watched and sat upon 
 and the young looked after for a time. In the marsupials the period 
 of gestation is longer, but the young are so immature that they are 
 carried by the female in a natural pouch for a certain period, thus 
 going through a sort of internal and external gestation. 
 
 The higher we go the longer is the period of gestation and help- 
 lessness combined. Some animals, as the elephant and the cow, have 
 longer periods of gestation than woman, but the young of no animal 
 is so long, or anything like so long, in passing from the time from 
 the fertilization of the ^%% to the time when they are self-maintaining. 
 
 The young of man being so long helpless requires additional 
 time and care firom the mother. Woman's form, mind, sympathies, 
 and, in fact, her whole nature, have developed in harmony with this 
 necessity. 
 
Sex. 
 
 51 
 
 As a recapitulation we may say that sexual reproduction in all 
 the simpler forms of life was short in duration for but a comparatively 
 small compass of previous evolution had to be repeated in the young. 
 The Qgg generally matured outside of the mother and independently 
 of her, and the young when coming from the o^gg were at once ready 
 to care for themselves without parental protection. 
 
 As evolution and improvement progressed, the young passed 
 through longer and longer periods of helpless infancy either in or 
 out of the mother, or both, and needed more and more protection and 
 care. As the necessities of the case changed, so the relation of the 
 sexes changed. At first reproduction demanded the female for the 
 &gg and the male only for fertilization ; consequently in plants, in- 
 sects, and the less developed forms of life, we find the male sex 
 generally inferior to the female. 
 
 But as the young made more and more demands upon the mother, 
 and eventually the young came to be born helpless as in man, demand- 
 ing care and help for the long period required by them to pass through 
 former stages of development, the necessities for a protector arose, 
 and we find the male sex in all the superior animals the strongest 
 and most capable outside fighters From the necessities of the high- 
 est improvement arose marriage and the family in man. 
 
 This sketch of the outline of the necessary development of 
 motherly qualities coincident with the development of life gives 
 every reason to suppose that a farther advance and development of 
 man will leave the chain of experience unbroken, and that accom- 
 panying it will be a development of further motherly qualities and 
 capacities to carry the young through a still longer period of help- 
 lessness. The female sex is a necessity of development. As time 
 and development have progressed, the sex has become more and more 
 individuated. 
 
 Even in man we see the male and female differ less in all respects 
 amongst the primitive races than amongst the highest, so also we 
 see the children of savages mature far more quickly and cease their 
 mental growth much sooner than those of civilized man. 
 
 In this connection it may not be amiss to call attention to the fact 
 that it is amongst savage and primitive races that woman's right to 
 work is not denied, but that, on the contrary, she is continually 
 forced to the unexciting drudgery of industrial work in societies of 
 the militant type. As the savage child is able to take care of itself 
 much sooner than the civilized one, this was not so much a hardship 
 to primitive women as it would be to the highly civilized. 
 
 Progress in mankind first demanded the enslavement of women 
 for the foundation of the family. The family once secured and 
 
52 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 society established firmly on it as a foundation, we find farther prog- 
 ress accompanied by a relief for the female from excessive drudgery 
 or the outside industrial fight, leaving her more opportunity for the 
 grand duties of reproduction, of child-bearing, and of forming the 
 next generation. 
 
 Amongst the mammals the female must fight, and for the most 
 part secure her own subsistence as well as that of her young. It is 
 only amongst the higher types that the male protects the female and 
 the young. With savage man the woman no longer has to fight, 
 but all the drudgery is hers. It is amongst the most civilized men 
 and during the most progressive periods that we find the woman 
 given most time for reproduction. Considering this fact, it may well 
 be deemed doubtful whether the present tendency of society by late 
 marriage, avoidance of childbirth, etc., to throw women on their 
 own resources and to make of them outside industrial and political 
 competitors, is not a reversion to an inferior type rather than an 
 advance, 
 
 A number of facts in the history of mankind and in the present 
 social organization of primitive industrial societies give a strong 
 probability to this view. While it is true that those primitive militant 
 organizations from which the marriage, polygamous first and 
 monogamous afterward, the security of paternity, the family, and the 
 government of the present dominant races sprang, have shown dis- 
 regard toward the rights of women, it is not true of all primitive 
 societies. On the contrary, primitive industrial societies all place 
 women in a much better position from the woman's rights' point of 
 view than the militant societies. In those industrial organizations 
 "where sexual intercourse is more or less promiscuous, in those where 
 the unions are temporary, and in those where they are polyandrous, 
 the first idea of inheritance must be on the maternal side, for there 
 is little if any security of paternity. 
 
 The importance of women in society, owing to this fact, must be 
 increased. They are not captured, because these societies are peace- 
 ful, and the lack of chastity makes it useless to buy them. They 
 are not, then, looked on as property, and not treated as such. 
 Women in primitive industrial societies, and in some militant ones, 
 as the Iroquois, derived, doubtless, from them, have a considerable 
 choice in selecting their husbands, are often chiefs or rulers, and on 
 separation or divorce have a share of the property, usually one half, 
 and take the children. Their right to inheritance of property is rec- 
 ognized. With this high position of women for barbarians, we find 
 a weak social organization. Nowhere have such societies been able 
 to survive the competition of those societies where the patriarchal 
 
Sex. 
 
 53 
 
 form has prevailed, in which women have had a comparatively much 
 inferior standing, often to the extent, in the earliest militant type, 
 of being treated with great cruelty. These primitive industrial socie- 
 ties, as far as they exist to-day, are confined to localities either in- 
 capable of supporting a high civilization, or so isolated as to protect 
 them from the destruction of their fellow-men. Thus we find the 
 lyapps and Esquimaux within the arctic circle, the Thibetans on 
 the high arid table-lands of the Himalayas, the Andamanese and 
 Dyaks on tropical islands, the Nairs on the hills of India, the Pueblos 
 on the deserts of Arizona, etc., all of this type. We must, then, be 
 brought to the conclusion that in primitive man the freedom and 
 high position of woman was not, and is not, conducive to chastity, 
 to the security of paternity, which gives the man a definite object to 
 protect and provide for a mother and his children by her, and con- 
 sequently to the creation of the family, from which our civilized 
 forms of government spring. Without security of paternity the pro- 
 gressive increase of the helpless period in the young essential to the 
 improving man has no means of being provided for. Therefore, 
 these primitive industrial types have been swept away or into 
 corners by the more progressive patriarchal organizations. We are 
 now ordering our civilization more and more on the industrial type. 
 Our women now inherit property, may take the initiative in divorce, 
 and are commencing to vote, as in the primitive failures of society 
 (natives of Amoor River). Woman's chastity, as with them, is less 
 considered than it was in the militant type, and few people think of 
 stoning adulterers, or of killing the seducer of a wife or daughter. 
 Where it is done, for the most part, is amongst the militant ex-slave- 
 holders of the South. The position of prostitutes, while still deserv- 
 edly damned, is much more tenable, in this country at least, than 
 it was twenty-five years ago. 
 
 The family has less cohesion and respect than formerly. The 
 state has taken many of its functions, such as infant education. As 
 Spencer says : * ' It may well be surmised that in some directions the 
 change in woman's situation has gone too far, but this need not and 
 ought not to put any limit on her progress in true directions." What 
 these true directions are is not now known, but the true measure for 
 woman's position now and hereafter must always be the interest of 
 the generation, and generations to come. 
 
 The cruelty and oppression of woman by man in the social or- 
 ganizations that have everywhere preceded man's civilization, took 
 the form of forcing the women to do all the work of which they were 
 capable. The men fought, the women worked. The limit of abuse 
 and drudgery was the line beyond which the women could not bear 
 
54 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 enough children to sustain the tribe. With all this heavy outdoor 
 labor child-bearing and child care could not be fully developed, and 
 it is this reason which has given societies giving their women better 
 treatment and work more suited to their reproductive duties the 
 advantage. 
 
 A strong indication that sex cannot be aborted in its reproductive 
 function without injury, is the effect upon the body and character of 
 men or women by the destruction of their respective reproductive 
 organs. The mutilated man at once loses physical force and endur- 
 ance. His voice changes, approaching the feminine type, and his 
 moral tone and force of character are impaired, if not destroyed. The 
 gait, attitude, and tastes all take on a feminine quality, and eunuchs 
 as a rule lose with their manhood the timbre of voice and courage of 
 their sex. 
 
 Women who have their ovaries removed generally depart from 
 the female type and assimilate to that of man. Often the beard com- 
 mences to grow, the mammary glands become atrophied, the voice 
 becomes gruffer and more masculine — the gait, attitudes, and tastes 
 become more and more those of men ; yet the force and structure are 
 lacking. A sterilized woman can never be a man, though destroyed 
 as a woman. A sterilized man destroyed as a man is not by far 
 made participant in the glories of woman. Both from something 
 become nothing. 
 
 These reflections should cause us to bear in mind the limitations 
 of sex both on the male side for some things and on the female side 
 for others, and to consider them in life plans and actions. It cannot 
 be good economy to undertake a man's work with a woman, nor a 
 woman's work with a man. In many things nature has issued her 
 fiat and it is impossible for the one sex to do the duty of the other. 
 
 The little boy seeks enjoyment in the contest, playing horse with 
 the tin soldier, with a drum, in hunting or adventure. The books he 
 first takes to are histories, accounts of travels, adventure, piracy, or 
 war. The girl is irom the first naturally pleased with playing home 
 and housekeeper with her doll, its dresses, and its house. It is an 
 exception ever with the freest choice that a girl takes to the rough 
 games of the boy. When she reads, it is the novel with love leading 
 to marriage. The boy seldom takes to the amusement of the girl. 
 
 Thus the instinct in the individual of the two sexes, at its earliest 
 manifestations, is without difiiculty seen to be different. The out- 
 ward appearances of the body characterizing so distinctly the two 
 sexes is but an index of the internal workings of the flesh functions 
 and of the nerv^es. To an observer these internal qualities are as 
 different in the sexes as is their outward appearance. 
 
Sex. 55 
 
 The difference in appearance, in temperament, in tastes, and in 
 action between the two sexes is so considerable that it is beyond escape 
 from even the inattentive. The natural lives of the two sexes in their 
 relation to each other are perhaps best shown when circumstances 
 break down the usual conventional relations that surround us. In 
 case of sudden accident, trouble, or danger the woman looks to the 
 man for help and protection. When the danger is so great as to 
 place the instinct of self-preservation above everything else, the fight 
 for life is won by the strongest in muscle, vitality, and judgment, as 
 the case may be. It is on such dreadful occasions as panics, fires in 
 public places, and wrecks at sea that we observe the men either 
 grandly and voluntarily sacrificing their lives to the women and 
 children, or in a frenzy of life instinct trampling them down in theatre 
 doorways, crowding them out of the boats of sinking vessels, or aban- 
 doning them to the fearful fate of fire or flood. Sad events these are, 
 sometimes showing grand qualities of character and heroism, some- 
 times uncovering a relentless demon of selfish cruelty. In either case, 
 the power of man and the weakness of woman in the outside fight 
 are brought into strong relief. 
 
 The tendencies of our time are toward a greater assimilation of 
 the activities of the sexes than has hitherto prevailed. This as- 
 similation in our civilization commenced in the feudal ages, and has 
 several culminating points, one coincident with the collapse of the 
 Italian municipal republics, one at the fall of the French feudal aris- 
 tocracy, and one now. In the civilizations of the past we find, as in 
 our own time, the rising period to correspond with a strong family life 
 and a marked differentiation of the activities of the sexes. The early 
 Egyptian, the early Greek, the early Roman, like the Knight in 
 growing feudalism, was the head of a family in which the wife was 
 a homebody. It is in Egypt dying, in Greece upon the verge of the 
 abyss, in Rome rotted to its core, in Florence failing, in the French 
 aristocracy going to the block, that we find women and men most 
 assimilated in their life activities. An incapacity or unwillingness 
 to procreate seems to have been a general accompaniment of all these 
 periods, resulting in the extermination, through non-reproduction of 
 the dominant classes, of those who had made and who supported the 
 civilization or system involved. 
 
 The Queen of Sheba demonstrates the capacity of woman, and 
 may have been the evidence of a national condition of woman active 
 in the same fields with man in Sheba ; at any rate, it is the last we 
 hear of Sheba. The glory of Palmyra goes out with Zenobia. Aspa- 
 sia bums bright at the death of Greece. Cleopatra marks the extinc- 
 tion of the Ptolemies and the absorption of Egypt into Rome ; and 
 
56 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 later, as the sun of Egypt's civilization sets forever in clouds of super* 
 stition, clouds bloody-hued with the glare of fiery fanaticism, we see 
 Hypatia rise on Egypt's horizon, pure and bright as an evening star, 
 as a souvenir of a glory departed and dead. Boadicea leads the last 
 hosts of Britain's dying life, and lyucrezia Borgia shines in an expir- 
 ing system. 
 
 The rule seems quite general that, as far as the past is concerned, 
 the shining of women in the activities before their time monopolized 
 by men, is a forerunner of destruction. The exceptions to this gener- 
 alization, which are quite numerous, on examination indicate that 
 celebrated women in fields occupied by men, when not noted at the 
 period of downfall, or shortly preceding it, are never and in no sense 
 an evidence of a general change in women's activities to an assimila- 
 tion with the outside activities of men. In the more general case of 
 noted women at the downfall of races, governments, and systems, they 
 have quite as invariably been the salient exposition of the general 
 altered relation of the sexes. Queen Elizabeth was a noted and 
 childless woman acting in the field usually occupied by man, but she 
 represented no general change on the part of the women of the time 
 from the home life to the ambitions of the contest of outside life. 
 The legal condition of women on the other hand had completely 
 changed in Rome at the time of Nero from what it had been in the 
 days of Scipio. The examination of past human records shows strong 
 and splendid women indeed in the rising periods of races, but their 
 general activities were in the home or family, and not in the field. 
 
 Strangely enough it is in the extremes of race life that we see 
 this assimilation of the sex activities. It is the barbarous Nair, the 
 Veddah, the Negrito, the Andamaner on one side, and the extremes 
 of luxurious civilization on the other, where we find the sex activities 
 most similar. 
 
 In some polities the females are given great power. Dahomey, 
 for instance, makes them soldiers, and we there find the celebrated 
 Amazons. These Amazons are all vowed to chastity and virginity. 
 Certainly there is little in the condition of Dahomey to encourage 
 us to follow its example. 
 
 We may indeed be convinced that women are capable of being 
 good soldiers, but we see nothing in military virgins looking to the 
 highest progress of the state. 
 
 Evolution has ever been from" the simple to the complex, from the 
 general to the special. The simplest life is without sex. Sex, then, 
 is a specialization accompanying all life's higher progress. It is least 
 specialized in its functions in the lowest life, and most in the highest. 
 
 An exception in low forms where there is a high specialization 
 
Sex, 
 
 57 
 
 runs through insect life. Insect life seems to be a no-thoroughfare 
 of evolution ; at any rate, it is only in this line that we find speciali- 
 zation with general domination of the female. It is amongst an allied 
 form of life that we find the female of a certain species of spider, when 
 annoyed or satisfied with the attentions of its diminutive male com- 
 panion, turn and devour him. Many similar relationships of the 
 sexes may be observed amongst insects. It is, however, in this form 
 that we find the Queen Bee specialized for breeding alone, but amongst 
 bees the male is still the inferior form. 
 
 It is in those forms of life called parasitic that we find at once 
 a general retrogression, a decay and loss of higher organs to fit a 
 lower method of life, and a general domination of the female. 
 
 It is in the scale parasites infesting trees that we find and observe 
 the female doing the most damage. The male is smaller and short- 
 lived. The tapeworm is the female of the tenia, and so on through 
 the whole class. 
 
 The specializations of sex in mammals, and especially and in- 
 creasingly in the highest forms of mammals, provide variations in 
 the female suiting her to care for the helpless period in her young, 
 increasing as progress increases, and variations in the male suiting 
 him to provide for her and his children, helpless for periods in pro- 
 portion to their progress. It is in mankind of all mammals, and in 
 civilized men of all mankind, that we first find an evolution of the 
 female in the higher types, making her the most beautiful and at- 
 tractive of the two sexes. It is amongst civilized men also that we 
 find the greatest physical differences between the sexes ; not only 
 the greatest difference of voice-timbre, of skin quality, of figure, but 
 also of bones, nerves, and muscles. 
 
 We can doubtless by breeding and training change this, and as- 
 similate the activities or capacities of both sexes. 
 
 Where would such a course lead us ? It is clearly reactionary. 
 It is apparently not in the line of the plain requirements of progress. 
 
 The conditions necessary to evolution or progress, the lines 
 hitherto followed, and the general aspect of the sexual relations are 
 such that we should lend ourselves slowly and with an ever vigilant 
 eye to the preservation of reproductive power, to the exaggerated 
 and hasty radicalism on sex matters growing out of the drift of a 
 society now meeting wealth, luxury, and scepticism— the destroyers 
 of former societies. 
 
 The past gives no promise of a solution of society's salvation 
 through sexual similarity. Quite to the contrary the line has been : 
 family strength, sex diversity ; progress ; wealth ; luxury ; scepti- 
 cism ; family weakness, sex similarity ; death. 
 
58 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 Here is a stew for humanity. When it is put on the fire it sends 
 smells of high hope to the nostril, but in the mouth it is rotten and 
 rancid. The last ingredients of this pretty kettle of fish must be 
 changed or we too must meet the fate of societies laid to rest before us. 
 
 In considering life from the point of view that the grand aim and 
 object is self-improvement continued in children to perfection, we 
 demand reproduction as the one unchangeable necessity. The 
 necessity is such by reason of individual death, and is the only 
 means to overcome this. Children vary in sex, so that one may 
 have mainly boys who in their turn may have mainly girls. In 
 each case the life goes on. The mother is perpetuated in her boys 
 as well as in her girls, and so also the father ; a female trait in the 
 mother will appear in the daughter of her son, and so a male trait 
 may pass to a grandson through the daughter from her father. 
 
 Immortality of the body through children is a grand object. 
 Through it we can perpetuate improvements in individual action. 
 If we accept the religion of reproduction we certainly should rise 
 above the prejudice of sex and discuss sex relationships from the 
 grand outlook of immortality and eternity. The little squabbles 
 of sex standing must not dominate and blind us. In the effort to 
 immortality by children one sex passes into and through the other 
 continuously: the man by reproduction having daughters becomes a 
 woman, and so the woman having sons becomes a man. We have 
 no interest in setting one sex over the other for a transitory and 
 immediately personal triumph. We have no interest in establishing 
 any false system fatal to race reproduction. If such change be made 
 in the interest of men, the father may at once suffer personally in his 
 daughters. If it be in the interest of women, the mother suffers 
 personally in her sons. In both, immortality of the vital flame is 
 endangered by error. 
 
 For immortality through reproduction we must have reproduc- 
 tion, but this being secure we are willing to discuss secondary 
 questions. We see that amongst low life the female often dominates 
 and still reproduction takes place, reproduction with female similarity 
 of activity or actual superiority. • But we can see in such conditions 
 no high types. Nor do such conditions seem to meet the require- 
 ments of the highest development. Progress upon the same lines as 
 those already followed by life-evolution means an increased prepara- 
 tory period, an increased duration of helpless youth, and an increased 
 length of time to pass through former and lower stages of existence 
 in the embryo and young. 
 
 Sexual similarity in form or function gives no expectation of 
 meeting such requirements. 
 
Sex. 59 
 
 The honeymoon is a period in the lives of the married immedi- 
 ately after the ceremony of union in which all the old convention- 
 alities and reserves that had properly kept the lovers apart before 
 marriage are cast to the four winds of heaven. The pair prefer 
 solitude, it may be that of the country or of the crowd, but they 
 abandon and avoid friends and family and forget prejudice, education, 
 and everything in the first transport of the union of their loves. It 
 is this return to nature that makes, as a rule, the honeymoon happy, 
 though bad education, bad surroundings, or absolute ignorance of 
 the true relations of marriage may, as they so often do, make the 
 subsequent married life, when these influences establish their power, 
 a failure. It is both interesting and instructive to watch with tender 
 sympathy young couples in the honeymoon. At this time when 
 nature has broken down the barriers of convention, we see the sexes 
 bearing more nearly their true relations to each other than in 
 ordinary life. It is a joy to the young husband to protect and watch 
 over his wafe, it is a joy to the young wife to be protected and to 
 look for support from the husband. 
 
 In the honeymoon when the woman is superior to the man, 
 happiness results from the vanity and blindness of the man in not 
 knowing the truth and in the self-deception of the woman whose 
 wise instinct still insists on looking up to the man even when there 
 is nothing to look up to. In the honeymoon the observant looker-on 
 may always note the sweet desire of the woman to find in the 
 husband a power to which she can look for protection. 
 
 The loving bride always thinks her husband physically and 
 mentally superior and stronger than herself. She wishes him to be 
 so, and the wish is father to the thought. The continuance and 
 increase of the honeymoon happiness into the future home depend 
 on the man's being the strongest in these qualities of the outside 
 fight. It is indeed rare to see a happy woman who is superior in 
 such qualities to her husband. I have never seen such a case, 
 although I have seen to my joy many happy homes. No one 
 ever saw a happy man who was the inferior in these qualities to 
 his wife. The woman, as has been said, has her superiorities, 
 upon the existence of which the happiness of marriage equally 
 depends. 
 
 The sweet determination of the bride to be dependent, to be lov- 
 ing and devoted, and to find in her husband the qualities peculiar to 
 the male is an instructive contrast to the protective tenderness of the 
 new husband, to his exaggerated sense of responsibility, to his watch- 
 ful care against all danger, and to his impetuous rush into every 
 breach through which harm may come to his wife. 
 
6o The Conquest of Death, 
 
 It is thus in the honeymoon that we see an abandon that returns 
 the sexes nearer to their natural relations than we ordinarily observe. 
 The conditions necessary for marital happiness are then accentuated. 
 The woman should have the truth of virtue, devotion to one idol 
 who is to re-create her in the child, industry to maintain the order of 
 home, and the tenderness of love to develop further when she is a 
 mother. The man must have the strength to ward off danger, and 
 to support the woman helpless in childbirth, and nearly so in child- 
 care, and the passions of love to drive him to the re-creation of him- 
 self and of his wife in the child. The child is the true union of man 
 and woman, the bond indivisible by law, indivisible while life or a 
 descendant of that life exists. We may summarize by saying that a 
 happy home requires the husband to be a man, and the wife to be a 
 woman, each complete in the characteristics of their respective sexes. 
 
 Sex is a differentiation in living things that by a specialization of 
 the reproductive function has made improvements in life possible 
 that without it would have never occurred. The greater the spe- 
 cialization is, speaking generally, the higher is the condition of life. 
 
 The main object of woman's existence is child-bearing. It is for 
 this that her organs and organization fit her. To her everything 
 else is secondary and inferior, so much overture, interlude, and finale, 
 but the plot and action of her life is child-bearing. So also is it with 
 man. All is secondary to the child. Without child, a man or 
 woman is nothing. Their existence in outside life has no reason 
 without this crowning glory of the child. 
 
 The barren woman is a zero. The mother is a patriot, replenish- 
 ing her country ; a creator, immortalizing herself and her husband. 
 She is grand. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 MARRIAGE. 
 
 MARRIAGE is a regulation of man, now established in some 
 form everywhere. By marriage the family is founded ; by 
 the family the higher social organizations become possible. 
 
 Pairing amongst animals is the outcome of the necessity of repro- 
 duction. It suggests the line of evolution our own marriage has 
 followed. The strength of the pairing instinct is in proportion to the 
 necessity for the protection of the young. Where the perpetuation 
 of life is insured by large numbers of young, as in most fishes, pair- 
 ing is weak or non-existent. The fertilization of the egg in nearly 
 all fishes takes place outside of the body, and there is no sexual 
 congress. In reptiles the egg generally is hatched by the sun, and 
 the young are able to care for themselves when leaving the shell. In 
 the higher forms of life, whose young, passing through former stages 
 of evolution, are in this period more or less helpless, more care is 
 required. This care at first given entirely by the female, is, as life 
 becomes more complex, and as its preparatory period becomes longer, 
 shared in by the male. In the highest types the male protects, and 
 often provides for, both mother and young. These necessities of 
 life continuation in man have become formalized amongst all of 
 humanity by custom and code into marriage. Marriage then is a 
 legal provision for reproduction. It is a codified expression of 
 the highest animal instincts for the continuation and improvement 
 of life. 
 
 In this convention man strengthens nature, as we see her mani- 
 festations in the sexual relations of other animals. The possession 
 given by monogamy to the husband of the wife, and to the wife of 
 the husband, especially the former, prevents the necessity of contests 
 to maintain the purity of the breed, and the certainty of the paternity 
 of the child, necessary to the highest interests of humanity. 
 
 The marriage laws of civilized countries bear the same relation 
 to reproduction that the laws of property do to securing to the laborer 
 the results of his or her efforts. Society protects in each case the 
 individual, and the necessity for fighting is minimized. Thus in 
 
 6i 
 
62 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 marriage a large amount of energy devoted amongst animals and 
 uncivilized man to capturing, or holding, or temporarily monopoliz- 
 ing females, is liberated for other uses. 
 
 The m'ain thing in marriage, as in all animal pairing, is the pro- 
 creation, protection, and support of the young. 
 
 All the great founders of institutions have been especially particu- 
 lar about marriage. Moses, lyycurgus, Solon, Numa, Mahomet, and 
 the leaders of Eastern civilization have laid great stress upon this 
 essential regulation of society. 
 
 In world time it is a recent arrangement. Those things secondarily 
 dependent on it are of still more modern growth. 
 
 These noted formulators of law, it is true, only codified existing 
 customs with probably merely moderate modifications in the line of 
 progress. Institutions have developed as man's command over 
 nature has developed. It is after all the creation and acquisition of 
 property that have done most to change primitive marriage forms, to 
 change descent and inheritance from the female to the male, and to 
 supply the dominating reason for the evolution and maintenance of 
 monogamian marriage. It is convenient to mark epochs in man's 
 history with the names of men most prominent in them, but it is in- 
 accurate to attribute to any of these the social system that they may 
 have formulated or represented. Such systems must have been due 
 to long growth, and must have mainly depended on the economic 
 condition of the people where they prevailed. 
 
 Surnames are a new idea, depending for their commencement and 
 existence on marriage and the security of paternity. We see the 
 first tendency toward them in allusions to persons as the son or 
 daughter of certain individuals. We see them in ancient history, in 
 the Bible, etc. In our own time many surnames still remain, which, 
 in the primitive dialects of our ancestors, meant son or grandson of 
 some individual. The prefixes Mac and Fitz mean son of, and the 
 prefix O means grandson. Thus MacGregor means son of Gregor, 
 and O'Hara means grandson of Hara. These were continued as sur- 
 names and notice of descent, and indicated in their time of origin a 
 shortly previous period in which the paternity of children had become 
 secure. 
 
 We may study in the same way the gradual adoption of the hus- 
 band's surname by the woman, indicating both the recognition of 
 the fusion of the pair in the children and the recognition of the 
 paternity of the children as secured by the marriage monopoly of 
 the woman by the man. The words new and recent are here used 
 in the belief that the human race has existed as such for periods of 
 tens of thousands of years. 
 
Marriage, 63 
 
 Marriage has been and is the greatest promoter of progress that 
 man has ever devised. The highest form of marriage, monogamy, 
 has been the keystone to rapid progress in the human race. As 
 chastity and fidelity has been the base of women's lives, so has been 
 the advance of mankind, slow or rapid. The reason is plain, for 
 with the fidelity of the wife comes certainty of paternity of her 
 progeny. 
 
 Thus the strongest motive for thought and work on the part of 
 the man is furnished. With the certainty to the husband that he is 
 growing up again, in a sense immortal, in his young children, with 
 the knowledge that he himself, without a doubt, has planted the 
 seed of life in the children he calls his, comes the motive for work 
 for more than that part of himself which must soon die and disap- 
 pear, for more than to-day. With the full belief that his life is 
 going on in his own progeny, he will be rewarded for work for that 
 part of himself, the child, which will live, continuing the father's 
 life, really marching the father to immortality, and for the to-mor- 
 row which he, the father, can only enjoy in the renewed life he has 
 in his child. 
 
 In the history of the human race, the certainty of fatherhood in 
 society has always been a concomitant of greatness, individual and 
 national. lyicense, corrupt morals, and general unchastity leading 
 to uncertainty of paternity reflect ever on those women who re- 
 main true, and lessen the value placed by society on virtue and 
 certainty of paternity. Periods when life was so conducted have 
 been slow in progress. When such periods followed periods of 
 fidelity, they have been retrogressive and the human race has gone 
 backward. 
 
 The early history of the great races shows an evolution in their 
 governments from a patriarchal form founded on the government of 
 a father over his own descendants and entire household, in which 
 the certainty of paternity was secure. 
 
 This is a point of advantage without which no race has achieved 
 even temporary success. We may therefore say that the security 
 of paternity of children is a fundamental necessity for the highest 
 civilization. 
 
 The customs and usages of many countries of our day show sur- 
 vivals of the patriarchal views from the early times. Two things in 
 these survivals are worthy of notice : one, the fiction that was so 
 long held in some places, and even very late in Rome, that all the 
 citizens of the country were descendants from a common ancestor ; 
 and the other, the value attached to female virtue, which often went 
 to great lengths. In many cases the tokens or signs of a wife's vir- 
 
64 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 ginity were taken the day after marriage and kept by the woman's 
 family or exhibited, as is the case to this day in some Slavonic 
 tribes. Moses speaks of this custom of keeping these tokens in 
 Deuteronomy when laying down rules for establishing the character 
 of a wife unjustly attacked by her husband. 
 
 It may be asserted with good foundation that mankind escaped 
 from barbarous conditions through the institution of the family. 
 The first point gives strength to the inference that civilized govern- 
 ment in its political base has arisen through and by the family out 
 of a previous social type resting on the gentes, phratry, and tribe, 
 and based on kin, but not on the family as we have it. The second 
 point shows that the chastity of women giving security of paternity 
 was an essential feature of social evolution. 
 
 Another consideration in this connection is that in all the his- 
 torical civilizations that have fallen, the fall was preceded by a period 
 of immorality, a diminished respect for chastity and children, and 
 a decay of the marriage institutions. Thus before the fall of Rome, 
 marriage and child-bearing had both lost their former high repute. 
 In Greece it was the same. Amongst modem nations I am aware of 
 no case where a fall or setback was not preceded by a period of 
 domestic corruption. 
 
 A retrogression in power and condition must always be expected 
 when there is a retrogression toward the primitive type in sexual 
 intercourse. The marriage relation has been attacked in every pos- 
 sible way, but without permanent success. Perhaps no more insidi- 
 ous arraignment of it exists than that of the corrupt and cowardly 
 Bacon. In one of his essays, he says, amongst other things : ' ' Cer- 
 tainly the best works and of greatest merit for the public have pro- 
 ceeded from the unmarried or childless men. ' ' 
 
 That some unmarried or childless men have done great works is 
 true. It is also true that eunuchs and women have performed great 
 works. Some such have also been accomplished by those of unsound 
 mind, like Joan of Arc. But the progress of the world and of 
 humanity has been the work of fathers and not of celibates nor of 
 the sterile. 
 
 From Rameses, the greatest king of Egypt, who had 169 chil- 
 dren, to our own Washington and Jefferson we see that the power and 
 desire for precreation is the usual accompaniment of genius. Wash- 
 ington was unfortunately without legitimate heirs, but he appears to 
 have had a number of illegitimate children. 
 
 On the contrary, men of creative ability in ideas have, as a rule, 
 been dangerously overflowing with creative ability as animals. 
 Geniuses have usually been ardent lovers and when they have failed 
 
Marriage. 65 
 
 to perpetuate themselves, the fault has lain in their sexual excesses 
 or irregularities more than in their coldness or incapacity. The wife, 
 too, must occasionally take the blame, for we know from the careful 
 figures of Dr. Parvin that approximately one woman in eight is 
 sterile. 
 
 Dr. Parvin' s figures apply to social conditions different firom those 
 prevailing in America. The last Massachusetts census shows the 
 general average for the State in sterility amongst American married 
 women to be one in five. In some districts, and those the most 
 exclusively American in every influence, one married woman in four 
 is childless. This extraordinary sterility is accompanied by a 
 lessening regard for chastity, an increase in prostitution and divorce, 
 and demonstrates a reversion to the Syndyasmian or temporary pairing 
 form of marriage, from which patriarchal and monogamous marriage 
 developed. In this country and now, the wife evidently is an 
 unusually important cause of man's failure to reproduce= Dr. R. T. 
 Morris claims that there is also going on a progressive atrophy of the 
 reproductive organs in the American white female. This he under- 
 takes to demonstrate by examinations by medical men of ten Aryan- 
 American women, and comparing these with ten American negresses. 
 His figures show 80 per cent, of greater or less abnormality in the 
 reproductive organs in the white American women, and indicate 
 a tendency toward sexual atrophy. The negresses were all found 
 normal. 
 
 No idea could be more false or inconsistent with general history 
 than that great achievement demands celibacy. Were such a fact, 
 the world's deeds would have been done by priests or fakirs. So 
 also the proudest pinnacle of human glory would have been that 
 barren period of the Dark Ages dominated by anchorites, monks, and 
 crazy, childless nondescripts. So also those times of family decay 
 and decreasing birth-rate seen in Greece, Rome, etc., would have 
 been as great in achievement as they were despicable in deeds and 
 sterile in children. 
 
 As the true idea of the greatness and grandeur of creation in 
 marriage is comprehended, more and more will the foremost men and 
 women of the world be found looking to love for fortune, and to the 
 child as their noblest work. Some have opposed marriage on the 
 ground of its unremunerative expense ; or, if not opposing matri- 
 mony on this ground, have condemned child-bearing. Starting even 
 on as low a basis as this, its opponents' opinions cannot stand 
 examination. Do we not breed other animals with profit ? What 
 animal is capable of more production than man ? Taking slave 
 times as a criterion, we find that the child is not a bad investment : 
 
66 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 a good-looking black girl was worth, not long since in America, 
 about $900 at fifteen years of age ; a handsome young mulatto^ 
 several thousand ; a young man with a trade, $1200 to $1800 ; and 
 had a profession been possible, doubtless the price, as in horses^ 
 would have run far into the thousands. Amongst the ancients, 
 when slaves were usually made from all classes of the conquered 
 populations, very extravagant prices were often paid for individual 
 slaves. We may well imagine that the price of an ^sop, or of a 
 Greek female slave similar to the beautiful woman commemorated 
 in the celebrated statue of Milo, would have been high. 
 
 I have from curiosity asked great numbers of parents in the 
 medium walks of life what they would take for a child, and have, 
 with scarcely an exception, found them unwilling to even consider 
 a money price which would deprive them of the company, care, and,, 
 if you like, the trouble of their baby. 
 
 We can thus perceive that there is a real material value in the 
 child as a profitable crop, if we but knew how to utilize it, and also a 
 value in a spiritual way which a parent able to support life is unwil- 
 ling to translate into money. 
 
 It will not do, however, to gloss over the changed social and 
 economic conditions in which we live as compared with those of our 
 fathers. They took pride in a large family ; we dread or avoid many 
 children. In their time a farm was largely self-sustaining ; the 
 necessaries, even to the carpets, were generally made at home. 
 Education was in actual life and on the farm. Every child was a 
 helper, and by so much increased the power and production and 
 independence of the family. A large family under a judicious head 
 meant success and wealth. To-day we have become specialists. 
 The family, as a unit, is not self-sustaining in th^ old sense. The 
 standard of material condition is higher and more difficult of attain- 
 ment. Education absorbs increasingly long periods of the child's 
 life. This results in two things. First, the child's education is 
 altogether a burden — that is, excluding any fee for tuition, the child 
 must be boarded and clothed according to the social standard for 
 many years while producing nothing, while formerly the education 
 of the child was accomplished through its participation in the 
 productive work of the family ; schooling was at a minimiun. 
 Secondly, the child, separated so much from family influences, hopes, 
 and interests as our modern system demands, loses the family feeling 
 of the old style. Thus a child in our early history was, as a rule, a 
 source of reliance and support to the family, and remained more or 
 less in connection with it. This condition has been and is being 
 weakened to-day. We must in honesty admit that the general view 
 
Marriage. 67 
 
 of a large family to-day is that it is an excessive responsibility, 
 costly and burdensome, a source of care and weakness and not a 
 source of solace and strength. 
 
 While I have personally found no one willing to sell a child, I 
 know of a large number of cases of adoption, some of which were of 
 children with living parents. In fact every now and then one sees 
 an advertisement of a child for adoption. There must be those, 
 then, who value their children very little even after begetting them. 
 
 It is very probable that the present reaction and reversion of 
 women to the outside industrial type of the savage or barbarian 
 comes from the destruction of home manufacture and industry in the 
 family on one side, and on the other from the increased standard of 
 life, weakening of the family tie, and decreasing appreciation of 
 matrimony and procreation. 
 
 What dangers we discover in the weakening reproductive power of 
 Americans, threatening their proximate extermination, has far- 
 reaching industrial, social, and religious causes. No law like the 
 French one offering a bonus for a seventh child can have much 
 effect. We must seek the remedy deeper. 
 
 Humanity is actuated by motives which must be good if the race 
 is to progress. The strongest motive for thought, invention, action, 
 and work, and especially for great work, which can either not be 
 enjoyed by the worker in his life or only partially enjoyed, is the 
 security that such effort can be enjoyed by one's other self— that is 
 to say, in one's children. For this motive to operate in full force 
 there must be a certainty as to the paternity of children. 
 
 From plain, natural causes there always is a certainty of mother- 
 hood. Thus we see the reason for the fact that amongst many 
 savage tribes of to-day and of the past, the name, inheritance, and 
 lineage were often derived from the mother and not from the father. 
 The reason is plain that, the marriage institution being undeveloped 
 or of a combined polygamous and polyandrous nature — that is, a group 
 of men being husbands to a group of women,— certainty of paternity 
 did not exist, and therefore inheritance depended only on the cer- 
 tainty of maternity. That this was an inferior condition of society 
 is shown by the fact that the tribes and nations adopting rules that 
 secured the paternity of the child to a husband have surpassed and 
 left all other tribes behind. 
 
 In the gentile organization, which prevailed everywhere amongst 
 man as he emerged from the savage to the barbarous stage, and 
 which has been a stage in the evolution of every civilized people, 
 past or present, the inheritance was, like the marriage, to the group 
 or gentes and not to the child. Originally always to the mother's 
 
68 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 gentes, it only changed to the father's gentes as conditions of pro- 
 gress and acquisition of property by the man made him dissatisfied 
 in not seeing his labors enure to the benefit of his progeny. Pairing 
 doubtless had taken the place of group marriage to a considerable 
 extent when this change was accomplished. The first formulated 
 step in the evolution of marriage from the group or Punaluan to the 
 monogamian form, was the change of inheritance and kinship from 
 the female to the male. 
 
 The recent advance of humanity has been confined to peoples 
 having the institution of marriage as we know it. The progeny 
 and condition of a people may be measured by their attitude toward 
 marriage. 
 
 When the certainty of who the father is, is a rule of social 
 organization, the resulting motive for work will by sympathy affect 
 even those who have no children, and vice versa. Where society 
 makes no case of female fidelity and male parentage is consequently 
 uncertain, even a reasonable security of paternity on the part of 
 some will have less force through the sympathetic influence of the 
 general view and general absence of the motive. 
 
 Men have their individual and their aggregate motives. The 
 effect of the opinion of the masses upon the individual is best illus- 
 trated by studying panics and the frequent and almost inexplicable 
 enthusiasm or violence for evil or for good .seen in crowds. Man is 
 undoubtedly influenced by the social standard of his time although 
 he himself may have a different standard. If he be thus at variance 
 with his surroundings, he will be less influenced, but still influenced. 
 
 Man is and must be, from the limitations set forth in the chapter 
 on sex, the outside contester and property accumulator, the fighter 
 in industry, as in war, of the human race. It is he also who may be 
 pressed on in effort by the knowledge always possessed by the 
 woman as to her progeny, that he lives again in his own children ; 
 that his likeness, his life, his spark of immortality is his child, and 
 that he can thus enjoy through this new life in his child the efforts 
 which would otherwise be of little or no benefit to him. 
 
 The certainty that a particular life is from you, and the result of 
 your own godlike powers of creation, is a motive of incalculable 
 power for good. It is the man also who may be deprived of this 
 greatest of all reasons for development of human power through 
 loose social rules, more or less promiscuous intercourse, and the 
 resulting uncertainty of paternity of children, or total sterility. 
 
 From these reasons it will be plain that it is of the very greatest 
 importance to the welfare of human beings, and above all to their 
 further development, that man should have this grand incentive to 
 
Marriage, 69 
 
 use all his powers and faculties, and to improve them in himself re- 
 newed — that is to say, in his child. 
 
 The value of the marriage tie, and of the observance inviolate of 
 the wife's chastity, is thus shown to be on a high plane. It involves 
 the godlike quality of creation possessed by man and woman united, 
 the purity of the breed, and the perpetuation of the joined vital flame 
 in the child, which gives humanity a tangible promise of immortality. 
 Its benefits are a peaceful and natural life to the woman ; giving her 
 dignity as wife, grandeur as mother and part-creator of the child, and 
 a maturity and old age happy in the love and devotion born only of 
 the blood tie. To the man it gives comfort, the happiness of home, 
 the indescribable delight of conjugal love, to which that of a mistress 
 is as that of Hyperion to a Satyr ; and, above all, it gives him the 
 child in which to live again, and for which every faculty may be 
 drawn on, thus making the father doubly great through his improve- 
 ment in his self-renewal. 
 
 In the Middle Ages a life of suffering and misery was considered 
 the shortest road to heaven. Under such a doctrine virginity and 
 celibacy were deemed a sure means of reaching paradise. The sup- 
 pression of our greatest natural instinct, reproduction, and the dis- 
 couragement of marriage, in which relation mankind has the highest 
 capacity of happiness and joy, with the consequent ill-health of body 
 and of mind which such abnormal life always brings in a highly 
 organized society, was the beau ideal of an uneasy, unhappy, and 
 miserable existence and was in complete harmony with the general 
 view. 
 
 The avoidance and disgrace of marriage in those times had two 
 effects : first, an arrest of progress and a stagnation which gave the 
 name to the time '' Dark Ages" ; and, second, a license and prosti- 
 tution which pervaded all classes from the Church and royal families 
 to the peasant. Even nuns, monks, and popes, the very preachers 
 of celibacy, were notoriously licentious. Thus nature could not be 
 conquered. 
 
 The first result was the sinking out of sight of the grand act of 
 paternity and its perpetuation of the parents in the child ; the second, 
 the impossibility so many wete under of a legitimate and honorable 
 exercise of nature's great command. 
 
 The effect upon each succeeding generation must have been 
 cumulatively bad. For those persons of a kind, religious, and stu- 
 dious disposition took to the monasteries where celibacy prevented 
 breeding, while those of enterprising or investigating disposition 
 were so persecuted or destroyed as to discourage procreation in 
 them. Galton calls attention to the effects of this system in elimi- 
 
70 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 nating from the world the best and the perpetuation of the least 
 worthy. Spain is a striking instance of what such a policy can do. 
 
 Toward the end of these ages syphilis, that awful scourge of man 
 visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children to the third and 
 fourth generation, appeared. The rapidity of its spread all over 
 Europe showed the extent to which general depravity and license had 
 gone. 
 
 A curious statistical fact is the excessive proportion of insanity, 
 delirium tremens, and suicides amongst the single as compared to the 
 married. So also, according to Becquerel, at seventy there are 26.9 
 married to 11.7 unmarried men living. There is everywhere more 
 crime among the single than among the married ; the proportion 
 varies, but it is always considerable. 
 
 The study of suicides is exceedingly interesting. It is not only 
 that single individuals suicide more frequently than the married 
 (about three to one), but amongst the married childless men suicide 
 twice as frequently as those with children, and childless women 
 three times as often as those with progeny. With widowers and 
 widows the same conditions to a more marked degree prevail. 
 
 It is probable that there is a common cause out of which sui- 
 cides and prostitution both come. As society grows in complexity 
 and its standards become more difficult of attainment, so must we 
 expect to see with sad eyes the weak and unfit in moral or physical 
 power fall by the way. 
 
 Again as societies have gone off on side tracks and been lost in 
 some error or exaggeration ; when they have thus developed on lines 
 which bring them to a point where it is impossible for the mass of 
 their humanity to conform to the system and prosper, as in Greece 
 and Rome, we must have collapse with an increasing misery of the 
 individual till the system is reformed or destroyed. 
 
 Considerable numbers of persons and families have been unable 
 to keep up with the progress of their societies. There is reason to 
 think that such stranded beings not only fail to keep up with their 
 fellows, but tend to revert to primitive types of social organization 
 and even to conditions of no organization. 
 
 Suicides bear a direct relation to the manner of sexual intercourse 
 in a community. When such intercourse is in marriage mainly, 
 then are suicides fewest ; where the most prostitution and sexual 
 abuse exist, there are suicides the most numerous. What is a nun's 
 life on one side of marriage and a prostitute's life on the other, to 
 that of a wife and mother ? What is the life of a celibate or hermit 
 on one side of marriage and a debauchee's life on the other, to 
 that of the husband and father ? Old age in the father and mother, 
 
Marriage, 71 
 
 in a well-regulated family, is a glorious time of repose. The parents* 
 youth is multiplied and everlasting. In their children they live again. 
 
 To the childless human being, old age is a desolation worse to 
 many than is death. It has no dignity and no alleviation. A death's- 
 head is on every pleasure of the vanished youth of such unhappy 
 ones. Age to them is a curse. Death when it comes is complete. 
 They leave no life. 
 
 A virtuous wife, who is a mother, will command not the love of 
 her husband in her youth and beauty alone, but his devotion in her 
 old age. A childless wife is but a mistress ; like a mistress she holds 
 her husband only by the tie of passion, or that of agreeable compan- 
 ionship, which often exists between persons of the same sex whose 
 characters are sympathetic. As such a wife grows old and loses her 
 charms, her hold on her husband rests only on the customs of so- 
 ciety, and, if she be fortunate, on the habit of companionship. There 
 can never be the grand, natural, innate feeling for her in her husband 
 which the united perpetuation of their being in progeny can give. 
 
 Children form a chain that binds the married together as nothing 
 else can. For this chain to have its full strength it is necessary that 
 not only should the paternity be certain, but that the accumulative 
 opinion of society should strengthen the belief. Therefore the 
 children of a mistress, though there be certainty of paternity, have 
 not the same binding power as those of a wife. Wedded life alone 
 can give a woman an assured old age. Material welfare is not here 
 referred to, but the sympathy that smooths the roughest paths of 
 fortune is what is meant. 
 
 Society must consider virtue in marriage absolutely essential, or 
 the general opinion sanctioning looseness will weaken even correct 
 feelings in the individual. Such periods of decay have continuously 
 recurred since monogamous marriage was instituted, and human 
 progress has been at such times arrested until a new virtue came in. 
 
 To avoid the effect of these periods is one of the main objects of 
 these chapters. It can only be done by fixing the value of chastity 
 in woman firmly in the minds and lives of a considerable family 
 circle of sufficient strength to counteract amongst its members the 
 general depravity to which society will from time to time become 
 a prey 
 
 The importance of the certainty of paternity and of the family 
 has caused the ancient legislators and others more modern, even 
 down to our own New England ancestors, to take strong measures 
 to preserve chastity. These rules varied from the stoning to death 
 of the adulterous woman to the placing on the breasts of such, the 
 Scarlet Letter. 
 
72 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 And, on the other hand, the punishment for rape was equally 
 strong, as we note from this summary of Dr. McKee's : 
 
 THE PUNISHMENT FOR RAPE. 
 
 The unlawful taking of the hymen has in all times been visited by the most 
 severe punishment. The penalty was death among the Jews, if the maid was 
 engaged. If a man lay with a betrothed damsel in the city, they were both, 
 stoned ; if in the country, the man only. It was reasoned that in the 
 city the maid could cry out and have help ; in the country she could not. 
 Among the Athenians, Romans, ancient French, and the English, and in many 
 of the United States, in their early days, the offence was punishable with 
 death. In New York, by the law of 1787, rape of a child under ten years of 
 age was punishable with death. In 1810 it was changed to imprisonment for 
 life. In Illinois and Massachusetts the punishment was death. In Texas it is 
 still a capital crime ; and only as long ago as April, 1888, a man was hanged, 
 not lynched, at Gainesville, Tex., for rape. In the Isle of Man, in *' ye olden 
 time," there existed a very wise custom. The criminal was brought into a pub- 
 lic place, and his victim was given a sword, a whip, and a ring, and his pun- 
 ishment left entirely in her hands. She could kill, whip, or marry him. 
 Among the old Welsh, he who robbed a maiden of her hymen, there being two 
 witnesses to the same, was required to present his sovereign a piece of silver as 
 high as the sovereign's mouth and as large as his little finger.— St. I^ouis 
 Courier of Medicine. 
 
 But these rules were too severe, more in fact than human nature 
 could bear, and besides no one had arrived at the true idea of matri- 
 mony and the necessity of virtue. Therefore reaction has always 
 followed such strict rules, the true basis of conduct which they were 
 made to support not being completely understood. 
 
 The public dancing girls of polygamous countries, the Hetairae 
 or brilliant prostitutes of the Greeks, and the farce into which mar- 
 riage was at last turned in Rome, where a marriage is recorded, the 
 bride in which had already had twenty- three husbands and the groom 
 twenty-one wives, the former wives and husbands having been di- 
 vorced, indicate what forms reactions against unappreciated strin- 
 gencies take. In modern times we see the same protest against 
 unexplained or unreasonable strictness. No more notable one has 
 existed probably than the gallantries and profligacy of the Restora- 
 tion in England after the Puritan rule. To-day there is nowhere a 
 stronger reaction against marriage and children than in New Eng- 
 land, where the rules for chastity were of the very strongest. Such 
 reversions are the protests of decaying societies against the rules on 
 sexual intercourse which had formed important elements in their 
 growth. 
 
 While various safeguards are necessary in the rules governing 
 the conduct of women, to secure certainty of paternity two things 
 
Marriage. 73 
 
 must not be forgotten : first, that the grandeur of virtue and child- 
 birth must be understood ; and second, that the progress of the race 
 depends on the development of the woman as well as on the develop- 
 ment of the man. Therefore these rules should not take unnecessary 
 forms, totally destroying the self-reliance and character of the woman. 
 Such a course w411 leave considerable portions of the woman's higher 
 qualities unused, and consequently not only unprogressive but 
 retrogressive. These qualities will become atrophied and the chil- 
 dren bred and reared by such mothers will inevitably show the 
 mother's weakness. From this cause the harem system of the Turk, 
 although giving certainty of paternity, is non-progressive beyond a 
 certain point, through the counter effect of undue suppression of all 
 development in the women. 
 
 It is probable, too, that the peculiar sympathy and completion of 
 humanity in well executed monogamy is not found in polygamy. In 
 polygamy the children of each mother under her special influence 
 are liable to grow up with a feeling of hostility to the children of 
 the father by other mothers. 
 
 This is a fact in polygamous households and the rivalries of the 
 mothers are usually intensified in the children. So the stories of 
 bloodshed and fratricide in the ruling families of polygamous peo- 
 ples are common. One son rules after exterminating his brothers. 
 Fratricide under monogamy is rare, thus showing that the family tie 
 under this system is stronger, and that the affections which add so 
 much to our life joys have a play nowhere else found. 
 
 The commonly received ideas as to the suppression of women in 
 polygamous countries are, however, very much exaggerated. In 
 the higher forms of polygamy, the women inherit property, have the 
 right of divorce upon liberal grounds, rule their houses, and play an 
 often important part in government. The memoirs of the Arabian 
 princess, Salme, afterwards Emily Reiite, gives a good idea of the 
 Oriental life of women. Polygamy shows its own weakness hy ever 
 tending to monogamy. Almost always in polygamous households 
 there is a favorite who monopolizes the husband, and frequently ob- 
 tains the lion's share of the husband's property for his children by 
 her to the exclusion of his children by other wives. 
 
 The great majority of men in polygamous communities are, how- 
 ever, monogamous. The difficulty of obtaining women, the cost of 
 maintaining, and, as we learn from well-to-do persons with one wife 
 where they are allowed more, the desire to avoid the troubles and 
 contests of the harem, all tend to this result. A positive agree- 
 ment, in such places as Utah and Arabia, was firequently exacted 
 firom the man before marriage, by the bride, that he would have no 
 
74 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 other wives. Another curious thing in this connection is the fact 
 that the rate of childbirth is less in the most fertile polygamous coun- 
 tries than in the most fertile monogamous ones. So also in the early- 
 luxury and sexual license of the Roman Empire, when the emperors 
 desired to have sons and heritors for their greatness and had sexual 
 intercourse with large numbers of women who might aid them and 
 desired to aid them in their wishes, few of them succeeded. Some 
 had children before their achievement of power and license, but af- 
 terwards had none, or such weaklings as to be incapable of sustaining 
 their position. This sterilizing of man by excessive sexual indulgence 
 is a strong argument for the chastity and fidelity of the man under 
 the grand motive of worldly immortality only attainable in the child. 
 
 Promiscuous intercourse on the part of men or women tends to 
 sterility, as Bertillon says : 
 
 ''II ne pousse pas d'herbe dans les chemins o^ tout le monde 
 passe. ' ' 
 
 Sir Henry Maine calls attention to the unfavorable pathological 
 condition leading to sterility produced by promiscuous intercourse. 
 Dr. Carpenter refers to the same thing as observed by American 
 planters and their remedying it by forming the negroes into families. 
 
 Where each man in a community has a wife, it is easy to under- 
 stand that such a balance of the sexes would be likely to produce 
 more offspring, than a monopolizing of an undue share of women by 
 some men to the deprivation of others, but it is not so clear that a 
 surplus of women obtained by capture, purchase, or even the result 
 of the excessive death-rate of males by battle exposure, bred to by 
 the males under the polygamous system, would not produce more 
 progeny than the same number of men with one wife each. Strange 
 as it may seem, I am of the opinion that the one- wife system, under 
 favorable circumstances, is the most productive. There are no sta- 
 tistics on this point with which I am acquainted, but we obtain 
 some idea of the size of polygamous families by ancient records, such 
 as the Bible, the Egyptian genealogies, etc. 
 
 Occasionally we come across a record of over one hundred chil- 
 dren, as in King Rameses, w^ho is said to have had 169 children ; as 
 in Augustus the Strong, of Saxony and Poland, who is reported to 
 have had a large number of illegitimate children ; as in Gordian, a 
 Roman patrician of the decaying empire, who had, by his 22 concu- 
 bines, from 60 to 80 ; as in Sejid Said, Imam of Mesket and Sultan of 
 Zanzibar, who is said to have had about one hundred children by his 
 2 wives and 75 concubines and left 36 living children at his death ; 
 as in the Bishop of the 14th ward in Salt Lake, who had 50 chil- 
 dren, of whom 20 died in youth ; and as in Brigham Young and 
 
Marriage. 75 
 
 other Mormons. A group of five of the most prolific Mormon men, 
 for instance, had 150 children by 70 wives. The mortality in these 
 children was about 40 per cent. — a terrible rate. But these instances 
 are rare and they are not quite free from doubt. The records we 
 have, it must be remembered, usually only count the sons. Jacob 
 had twelve sons by his two wives and their two handmaids. He 
 may, however, have had some of these children by the large number of 
 concubines he took when he had become established ; we hear noth- 
 ing of his daughters. 
 
 David and Solomon had a great number of concubines, but their 
 children were comparatively few. The other biblical accounts of 
 polygamy show families frequently equalled in size by monogamous 
 marriages, when free play is allowed to the productive power of the 
 wife. 
 
 In the accounts of the ruling families of polygamous nations, such 
 as the Turks, Arabs, and many Eastern peoples, we usually find the 
 descendants not especially numerous. When the son of a dead prince 
 massacres his brothers, to quiet the title to the crown, he usually has 
 from one to five or six only to kill off. The sons of Sejid Said had 
 few or no children. His successor, Madjid, at Zanzibar, had but one 
 daughter, although a number of women were in his harem. 
 
 Mahomet, with a number of women in his harem (nine wives), 
 seems to have had but one daughter, ' ' Fatima. ' ' 
 
 The Mormon records frequently show a similar condition. Joseph 
 Smith, for instance, left but three children, although he had twelve 
 recognized wives. His living children were all born before he com- 
 menced his excesses. 
 
 Dr. Samuel W. Gross in his great work states it to be his 
 opinion that one sixth of the cases of sterility are due to defects in 
 the husband. We here have an indication of the importance of 
 this question. 
 
 My experience in Eastern nations is that the children in polyga- 
 mous households are not on the average as numerous as in our 
 own Western pioneer monogamous families, and that their marriages 
 are oftener sterile. The most plausible explanation of this, if it be 
 true that polygamy is not so productive as monogamy, is that the 
 husband becomes intemperate in his sexual indulgence, and that 
 consequently the spermatozoon has no time to become perfectly 
 formed. Thus the frequent intercourse with unimpregnated women 
 is unproductive. 
 
 Herbert Spencer incidentally takes an opposite view, which 
 causes me to be more doubtful on this point than I otherwise would 
 be. In polygamy there is jealousy in the wives, hatreds among the 
 
76 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 children, and absence of opportunity for the women to develop their 
 best qualities. All these things work against the complete influence 
 for good that man and woman derive from a perception of the 
 grandeur of their creative power, as shown in themselves renewed, 
 immortal in the child. 
 
 Where polygamy is as fertile as it may be, it must become difiicult, 
 if not impossible, to properly rear the children. The extraordinary 
 child mortality in the family of the wealthy Sejid Said illustrates 
 this point. 
 
 Monogamy, a single wife and a single husband, ought to produce 
 from ten to fifteen children, which is a good family, not too difiicult 
 to handle. In fact, such a family generally results better as to the 
 success of the children than smaller or larger families, because un- 
 natural coddling is seldom practised in a large monogamous family, 
 and still the support of the children in infancy is not so costly as to 
 invite neglect. Fifteen or twenty children is about all a man can 
 really take good care of — that is, give a fair opportunity to develop 
 the best there is in them. 
 
 From these reasons, polygamy, when fertility exists, is defective 
 as well as too expensive for a crowded population, and, on account 
 of the unequal distribution of the women, altogether unsuited for a 
 sparse one. 
 
 The subject of matrimony is of such vital consideration in the 
 welfare of human beings, the stages of its evolution are so interesting 
 and instructive, the esteem in which it is held varies so much from 
 time to time and in difierent places, the virtue, chastity, and child- 
 bearing duty of the wife are so frequently uninforced, to the ruin of 
 society and the arrest of progress, that it will be well to go a little 
 further into the subject. 
 
 If we accept the theory of development, there is no escape from 
 the conclusion that, at one time, man or his progenitors lived sex- 
 ually in the same promiscuous or unregulated way that the gregari- 
 ous animals now do. It must not be overlooked, however, that even 
 the animals and birds have a sort of marriage, and to some extent 
 protect the paternity of their young. The bull chases away from his 
 cows other bulls ; the wild stallion, other stallions from his mares. 
 Many animals and birds have a period of courting, and when they 
 mate go off by themselves on a sort of wedding tour, by which the 
 paternity of the ofispring is secured, at least for the time being. 
 Even aside firom the theory of evolution, the few facts we have of 
 man's history show that he has progressed slowly from a primitive 
 condition in which he used rude implements of flint and stone, to our 
 present civilization. 
 
Marriage. jy 
 
 While it is true that we know little or nothing as to the social 
 regulations of prehistoric man, still we have traditions, old customs, 
 mythologies, superstitions, systems of consanguinity and afiSnity, 
 and fragments her^ and there, which, taken with the actual lives of 
 primitive races still living in a savage and barbarous way, throw 
 some light on what the social laws of our own prehistoric progenitors 
 are likely to have been. 
 
 It is but fair to suppose that the lives of a race using stone imple- 
 ments, and generally in a comparatively undeveloped condition now, 
 are like those of other savage peoples, whether past or present, 
 whose stone implements show them to be or to have been in a similar 
 condition. When we can trace a custom, such as that of throwing 
 objects, especially shoes, at a departing bridal couple, common in 
 Anglo-Saxon countries, back step by step to greater and greater 
 simulated opposition, to the carrying oflf of the bride, until we find 
 amongst many peoples regularly arranged sham fights at every mar- 
 riage, it is but reasonable to infer that these customs are what remain 
 to us of a period when marriage took place by the actual capture of 
 women, still practised amongst some savages as a part of their re- 
 source for marriageable women. 
 
 Mcl/ellan, in his studies in ancient history, traces a number of 
 customs back to actual living practices now in vogue amongst savage 
 peoples. It is, however, possible that some of these customs, instead 
 of coming from wife capture, are survivals of gens regulations 
 against marrying in the gens. 
 
 We must not infer that because marriage was by capture in some 
 tribes, it was so in all tribes, or even entirely so in any. This is far 
 from the facts. We must use the same caution in considering all 
 marriage customs. 
 
 The marriage relation, we know, has practically no more exist- 
 ence to-day amongst a few of the most primitive tribes, than it has 
 among animals. These people are unprogressive and live a miserable 
 life. In the promiscuous or temporarily limited sexual intercourse 
 of the Andaman Islanders no family life is possible. As both 
 religion and government have grown out of the family, we can per- 
 ceive how impossible improvement is under these conditions. In 
 such societies, chastity in the women can have no reputation. 
 
 Amongst the Andamaners, for a woman to refuse a man a sexual 
 favor is said be be a serious insult. 
 
 All primitive social conditions put but small value upon female 
 chastity. With some tribes, as the Chibchas, a woman, who turned 
 out to be a maid when married, was treated with contempt by her 
 husband, because she had not been able to excite the passions of 
 
78 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 other men. Other tribes allow their girls to earn a position for 
 future marriage by prostitution, a primitive condition still prevailing 
 among us, as we see by the marriages of prostitutes, especially in 
 France and Germany, after they have acquired some property. The 
 Assanyeh Arab's marriages seem to have limited the woman in her 
 sexual intercourse only during a few days in the week or month ; at 
 other times the husband, we learn, felt rather complimented than 
 otherwise by his wife's sexual intrigues. 
 
 In most primitive tribes, a wife or daughter is readily loaned to a 
 stranger, and in some it is considered bad manners not to make the 
 offer. A survival of this feeling is seen in the story of Cato, who 
 loaned his wife to his friend Hortensius, and occasionally in records 
 of our courts of justice to this day. The formal and customary 
 compliments to women in Japan show a survival from a time when 
 sexual promiscuity must have been greater than now. Other, to us 
 abnormal, conditions in the sexual relation existed very generally in 
 ancient times, and do still amongst savages. 
 
 The royal families of Egypt, Peru, and other places are frequently 
 recorded as marrying brothers to sisters. Amongst the rulers of the 
 ancient Peruvians this seems to have been obligatory. With lower 
 tribes we find the males cohabiting with their mothers, daughters, 
 and sisters, as among the Chippeweyanas. 
 
 The royal marriage rules of Egypt and Peru were probably sur- 
 vivals in the royal family of the consanguineous marriage after the 
 general community had arrived at the Punaluan type. 
 
 Such promiscuous intercourse, especially in close kin, is unfavor- 
 able to reproduction. There is a natural feeling which we may pre- 
 sume to be a useful evolutionary inheritance, that disinclines us 
 instinctively to sexual intercourse with those we have been brought 
 up with as children in the same home. Out of this has probably 
 grown some of the exogamous customs of marriage, and the general 
 regulations of mankind against such marriages. 
 
 In war, primitive men seem to have considered the female as 
 part of the plunder. After the defeat or slaughter of the males, the 
 females were taken as wives, concubines, or slaves ; the reservation 
 of the males captured in war for slaves came much later. Primitive 
 men probably, at times, went to war to capture their wives. 
 
 Man's improvement by regulation on the primitive promiscuity, 
 which prevented the foundation of the family, developed on the 
 lines and in the order set forth by Morgan in his Ancient Society. 
 
 Dr. Lewis H. Morgan has made the first complete and rational 
 explanation with which I am acquainted of the social order, customs, 
 and systems of consanguinity and afl&nity that are known to have 
 
Marriage. 79 
 
 prevailed or do prevail amongst primitive mankind. His work gives 
 us a satisfying unity of comprehension of what were isolated and 
 incomprehensible facts recorded in savage and barbarous societies. 
 
 He demonstrates by names for kin that the earliest record of man 
 is the consanguineous system of kinship which he calls Malayan. 
 
 This system, with its descriptive nomenclature, could only have 
 originated where marriage, or more properly perhaps sexual inter- 
 course, was limited to brothers and sisters direct and collateral in a 
 group. 
 
 For instance, all the children in such groups are brothers and 
 sisters, all the husbands and all the wives are equally fathers and 
 mothers to all the children, and so on throughout the system. The 
 Malayan system of consanguinity indicates clearly that sexual inter- 
 course was theoretically and, as a rule, practically free in the group 
 of brothers and sisters, including what we now call cousins, but which 
 they did not and could not recognize as such. 
 
 Dr. Morgan's five types of marriage, as formulated by him in 
 Ancient Society^ are as follows : 
 
 THE ANCIENT FAMILY. 
 
 I. The Consanguine Family. It was founded upon the inter- 
 marriage of brothers and sisters, own and collateral, in a group. 
 
 II. The Pwialuan Family. It was founded upon the intermar- 
 riage of several sisters, own and collateral, with each other's 
 husbands, in a group ; the joint husbands not being necessarily 
 kinsmen of each other. Also, on the intermarriage of several 
 brothers, own and collateral, with each other's wives, in a group ; these 
 wives not being necessarily of kin to each other, although often the 
 case in both instances. In each case the group of men were con- 
 jointly married to the group of women. 
 
 III. The Syndyasmian or Pairing Family. It was founded upon 
 marriage between single pairs, but without an exclusive cohabitation. 
 The marriage continued during the pleasure of the parties. 
 
 IV. The Patriarchal Family. It was founded upon the marriage 
 of one man with several wives ; followed, in general, by the seclusion 
 of the wives.- 
 
 V. The Monogamian Family. It was founded upon marriage 
 between single pairs, with an exclusive cohabitation. 
 
 There were developed, however, but three systems of con- 
 sanguinity : 
 
 I. The Malayan, which continued into the Punaluan marriage, 
 being still fairly descriptive of the conditions it created. 
 
8o 
 
 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 2. The Turanian, which grew out of the ordering of society on 
 the gentes, which excluded own brothers and sisters from marriage. 
 Under this system mankind were united in tribes or confederacies of 
 tribes, generally limited to a common dialect and derived from a 
 recognized common ancestry. Each tribe was divided into gentes, 
 and these were often again united, in two gentes or more, into 
 phratries. No one could marry into his or her own gentes, not at 
 least until property induced the desire in the gentes to preserve the 
 wealth of heiresses to the gentes, at which time the gentile organiza- 
 tion was drawing to its term. The closest consanguine marriages 
 were thereby barred, because brothers and sisters belonged to the 
 same gentes. 
 
 The practically universal prevalence, in all races that are or have 
 progressed beyond a certain very low stage, of this gentile organiza- 
 tion demonstrated in Ancient Society is a remarkable achievement 
 in human history. 
 
 I should advise every one interested in marriage and its evolution 
 to read this valuable work. 
 
 3. The third system of consanguinity is the Aryan, which is that 
 which we now have in common with the Semitic race. The Aryan 
 system has its most complete and convenient exposition in the Roman 
 terminations. A table of the Roman system is annexed. Its value is 
 apparent. By it one can take any ascending or descending gene- 
 alogy to the sixth generation on simple unit terms and to the 
 twelfth generation by a duplication of the terms. The poverty of 
 our own language stands in sorry contrast to this old Roman simple 
 fulness of definition. The table is taken from Morgan. 
 
 1. tntavus.. 
 
 2. atavus. . . 
 
 3. abavus. . , 
 
 4. abavia. . . 
 
 5. proavus. . 
 
 6. proavia. . 
 
 7. avus 
 
 8. avia 
 
 9. pater 
 
 10. mater. . . 
 
 11. filius 
 
 12. filia 
 
 13. nepos 
 
 14. neptis. . . 
 
 15. pronepos 
 
 16. proneptis 
 
 17. abnepos . 
 
 great-grandfather's great-grandfather. 
 
 " . " grandfather, 
 
 great-great-grandfather. 
 
 " " grandmother, 
 great-grandfather. 
 
 " grandmother, 
 grandfather, 
 grandmother, 
 father, 
 mother, 
 son. 
 
 daughter, 
 grandson, 
 granddaughter, 
 great-grandson . 
 
 ** granddaughter. 
 
 ** great-grandson. 
 
Marriage, 
 
 8i 
 
 i8. 
 
 19- 
 20. 
 21. 
 22. 
 
 23. 
 24. 
 25. 
 26. 
 27. 
 28. 
 29. 
 30- 
 31. 
 32. 
 33. 
 34. 
 35. 
 36. 
 37. 
 38. 
 39- 
 40. 
 41. 
 42. 
 
 43. 
 44. 
 
 45- 
 46. 
 47. 
 48. 
 
 49. 
 50. 
 51. 
 52. 
 53. 
 54. 
 55. 
 56. 
 57. 
 58. 
 
 59. 
 60. 
 61. 
 62. 
 
 63. 
 64. 
 65. 
 66. 
 
 abneptis. 
 
 atnepos 
 
 atneptis 
 
 trinepos 
 
 trineptis 
 
 fratres , 
 
 sorores 
 
 frater 
 
 fratris filius 
 
 ** filiiuxor.. 
 
 " filia 
 
 •* filiae vir. . . 
 
 ** nepos 
 
 ** neptis 
 
 ** pronepos. . 
 
 *' proneptis. 
 
 soror 
 
 sororis filius 
 
 ** filii uxor, 
 filia 
 
 ** filiae vir.. 
 
 ** nepos . . . 
 
 " neptis. . . . 
 
 ** pronepos. 
 
 '* proneptis. 
 
 patruus 
 
 patrui uxor. 
 " filius. 
 
 filii uxor. 
 
 filia 
 
 filiae vir. . 
 nepos . . . . 
 neptis. . . 
 pronepos. 
 proneptis. 
 
 amita 
 
 amitae vir 
 
 filius 
 
 filii uxor. . , 
 
 filia 
 
 filiae vir. . . 
 
 nepos 
 
 neptis 
 
 pronepos. . 
 
 proneptis. . 
 
 avunculus 
 
 avunculi uxor 
 
 filius 
 
 " filiiuxor. 
 
 6 
 
 great-great-gran ddaugh ter. 
 
 '* grandson's grandson. 
 
 " ** granddaughter. 
 
 " " great-grandson. 
 
 " ** " granddaughter, 
 
 brothers, 
 sisters, 
 brother, 
 son of brother, 
 wife of son of brother, 
 daughter of brother, 
 husband of daughter of brother, 
 grandson of brother, 
 granddaughter of brother, 
 great-grandson ** *' 
 
 * ' granddaughter of brother, 
 sister. 
 
 son of sister, 
 wife of son of sister, 
 daughter of sister, 
 husband of daughter of sister, 
 sister's grandson. 
 
 ** granddaughter. 
 *' great-grandson. 
 " " granddaughter, 
 
 paternal uncle, 
 wife of paternal uncle, 
 son of paternal uncle, 
 wife of son of paternal uncle, 
 daughter of paternal uncle, 
 husband of daughter of paternal uncle. 
 grandson of paternal uncle, 
 granddaughter of paternal uncle, 
 great-grandson '* " " 
 
 ** granddaughter of paternal uncle, 
 paternal aunt, 
 husband of paternal aunt, 
 son of paternal aunt, 
 wife of son of paternal aunt, 
 daughter of paternal aunt, 
 husband of daughter of paternal aunt, 
 grandson of paternal aunt, 
 granddaughter of paternal aunt, 
 great-grandson '* ** ** 
 
 " granddaughter of paternal aunt, 
 maternal uncle, 
 wife of maternal uncle, 
 son " 
 wife of son of maternal uncle. 
 
82 
 
 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 67. 
 
 avunculi filia 
 
 daughter of maternal uncle. 
 
 68. 
 
 " filiae vir 
 
 husband of daughter of maternal uncle. 
 
 69. 
 
 70. 
 71. 
 
 " nepos 
 
 grandson of maternal uncle, 
 granddaughter of maternal uncle, 
 great-grandson " " ** 
 
 ' ' neptis 
 
 " pronepos 
 
 72. 
 
 ** proneptis 
 
 ** granddaughter of maternal uncle. 
 
 73. 
 
 matertera 
 
 maternal aunt. 
 
 74. 
 75. 
 76. 
 
 77- 
 78. 
 
 79. 
 80. 
 
 materterse vir 
 
 Tm<iTmTirJ nf mfll'PTnnl minf 
 
 '< filins 
 
 son ** ** ** 
 
 
 filii uxor 
 
 wife of son of * ' " 
 
 < 
 
 filia 
 
 daughter *' '' 
 
 husband of daughter of maternal aunt, 
 grandson of ** " 
 granddaughter of " . " 
 great-grandson of " " 
 " granddaughter of " " 
 
 ( 
 
 filise vir 
 
 ( 
 
 nepos 
 
 ( 
 
 neptis 
 
 81. 
 
 < 
 
 pronepos 
 
 82. 
 
 < 
 
 proneptis 
 
 83. 
 84. 
 85- 
 
 patruus mas^nus 
 
 great-paternal uncle. 
 
 son of great-paternal uncle. 
 
 grandson of great-paternal uncle. 
 
 patrui magni filius 
 
 nepos 
 
 86. 
 
 ** " pronepos 
 
 great-grandson of great-paternal uncle. 
 
 87. 
 
 88. 
 
 amita magna 
 
 great-paternal aunt. 
 
 daughter of great-paternal aunt. 
 
 amitae magnse filia 
 
 89. 
 
 neptis 
 
 granddaughter of great- paternal aunt. 
 
 90. 
 
 ** " proneptis 
 
 great-granddaughter of great-paternal annt. 
 
 91. 
 92. 
 
 avunculus magnus 
 
 great-maternal uncle. 
 
 son of great-maternal uncle. 
 
 avunculi magni filius 
 
 93- 
 
 " nepos 
 
 grandson of great-maternal uncle. 
 
 94. 
 
 " " pronepos... 
 
 great-grandson of great-maternal uncle. 
 
 95. 
 96. 
 
 matertera magna 
 
 great-maternal aunt. 
 
 daughter of great-maternal aunt. 
 
 materterae magnse filia 
 
 97. 
 
 " •' neptis.... 
 
 granddaughter of great-maternal aunt. 
 
 98. 
 
 " " proneptis. 
 
 great-granddaughter.of great-maternal aunt. 
 
 99. 
 100. 
 
 patruus major 
 
 paternal great-great-uncle. 
 
 son of paternal great-great-uncle. 
 
 patrui majoris filius 
 
 lOI. 
 
 nepos 
 
 grandson of paternal great-great-uncle. 
 
 102. 
 
 " ** pronepos 
 
 gt.-grandson of paternal great-great-uncle. 
 
 103. 
 104. 
 
 amita major 
 
 paternal great-great-aunt. 
 
 daughter of paternal great-great-aunt. 
 
 amitae majoris filia 
 
 105. 
 
 ** " neptis 
 
 granddaughter of paternal great-great-aunt. 
 
 106. 
 
 " " proneptis. . .. 
 
 gt. -granddaughter of paternal gt.-gt.-aunt. 
 
 107. 
 
 avunculus major 
 
 maternal great-great-uncle. 
 
 son of maternal great-great-uncle. 
 
 108. 
 
 avunculi majoris filius 
 
 109. 
 
 ** " nepos 
 
 grandson of maternal great-great-uncle. 
 
 no. 
 
 ** " pronepos. . 
 
 gt.-grandson of maternal great-great-uncle. 
 
 III. 
 
 matertera major 
 
 maternal great-great-aunt. 
 
 daughter of maternal great-great-aunt. 
 
 112. 
 
 materterae majoris filia 
 
 113- 
 
 " neptis.. . 
 
 granddaughter of maternal great-great-aunt. 
 
 114. 
 
 " " proneptis. 
 
 gt. -granddaughter of maternal gt.-gt.-aunt. 
 
 115. 
 
 patru 
 
 us maximus 
 
 paternal great-great-great-uncle. 
 
Marriage. 
 
 83 
 
 116. patrui maximi filius , 
 
 117. " '* nepos 
 
 118. *' " pronepos . . 
 
 119. amita maxima 
 
 120. amitse maximae filia 
 
 121. *' " neptis 
 
 122. " '* proneptis. 
 
 123. avunculus maximus 
 
 124. avunculi maximi filius 
 
 125. ** '* nepos. . . 
 
 126. ** '* pronepos 
 
 127. matertera maxima 
 
 128. materterse maximae filia . . 
 
 129. ** '• neptis 
 
 130. '* " proneptis.. 
 
 131. vir, maritus 
 
 132. socer 
 
 133. socrus 
 
 134. socer magnus 
 
 135. socrus magna 
 
 136. uxor, marita 
 
 137. socer 
 
 138. socrus 
 
 139. socer magnus 
 
 140. socrus magna 
 
 141. vitricus 
 
 142. noverca 
 
 143. privignus 
 
 144. privigna 
 
 145. gener 
 
 146. nurus .' 
 
 147. lever 
 
 148. maritus sororis 
 
 149. uxoris frater 
 
 150. " soror 
 
 151. glos 
 
 152. fratria , 
 
 153. vidua 
 
 154. viduus 
 
 155. agnati 
 
 156. cognati 
 
 157. affines 
 
 son of paternal great-great-great-uncle. 
 
 grandson of paternal gt.-gt.-gt. -uncle. 
 
 gt.-grandson of paternal gt.-gt.-gt.-uncle. 
 
 paternal great-great-great-aunt. 
 
 daughter of paternal great-great-great-aunt. 
 
 granddaughter of paternal gt.-gt.-gt. -aunt. 
 
 gt.-granddau'terof ** " ** " 
 
 maternal great-great-great-uncle. 
 
 son of maternal great-great-great-uncle. 
 
 g'dsonof •' " " '' " 
 
 gt.-grandson of maternal gt.-gt.-gt.-uncle. 
 
 maternal great-great-great-aunt. 
 
 daughter of maternal great-great-great-aunt 
 
 granddaughter of maternal gt.-gt.-gt. -aunt. 
 
 gt.-g'ddaughter of " " ** " " 
 
 husband. ^ 
 
 father-in-law. 
 
 mother-in-law. 
 
 great-father-in-law. 
 
 ** mother-in-law. 
 wife. 
 
 father-in-law. 
 mother-in-law. 
 great-father-in-law. 
 
 ** mother-in-law. 
 step-father. 
 
 " -mother. 
 
 " -son. 
 
 " -daughter. 
 
 son-in-law. 
 
 daughter-in-law. 
 
 brother-in-law. 
 (( (( (< 
 
 brother of wife. 
 
 sister " " 
 
 sister-in-law. 
 (( (( (( 
 
 widow, 
 widower, 
 agnates, 
 cognates, 
 marriage relations. 
 
 Polyandry seems to have been, as it still is, the prevailing type 
 of regulated sexual association amongst a few primitive peoples of 
 peaceful policy. It is confined to sterile and poor tracts of country. 
 It is of two kinds. The first, that in which a woman has a number of 
 
84 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 different husbands not necessarily related to each other ; this can be 
 termed the Nair type of polyandry, as it has been well observed in 
 the Nair tribe. In this type a man may probably be one in several 
 combinations of husbands, and therefore may have more than one 
 wife, as well as the wife have more than one husband. This type is 
 but a small improvement on no regulation. In fact it is below that 
 of many animals and birds. The second form of polyandry is 
 that in which the husbands must be related, as in the hill tribes 
 of Ceylon. The highest grade of this form is where the husbands 
 must be brothers. This is the practice in parts of Thibet, and gives 
 at least the security of paternity to one of several of the closest blood 
 tie. Its superiority over other polyandrous types would lead us to 
 expect that at least some communities living under that rule would 
 show a more advanced social organization than could be found in any 
 unregulated community, or in one regulated upon other polyandrous 
 forms. This is the case. 
 
 But security of paternity is neither regarded nor sought for in 
 any of these types. The virginity of the woman can be of no 
 moment, and her chastity after marriage cannot be of much import- 
 ance, even according to their own liberal rules. Under such a 
 condition, a woman's self-respect cannot be very great. Dignity in 
 reproduction and high breeding are at a low point, and relationship 
 must be through the mother mainly. Family relationship cannot be 
 as strong as under either polygamy or monogamy. 
 
 Polyandry is practised by a number of rude people still, and by 
 at least one fairly organized community, that of Thibet. 
 
 In polyandrous communities there are more males than females, a 
 startling variation from our excess of women in civilized communities. 
 The first suggestion to account for this condition was female infanti- 
 cide. Examination showed this position to be untenable. We now 
 learn that the births in these communities show a great excess of 
 males. Dunlop found in one Himalaya district 400 boys ta 120 girls. 
 Amongst the Todas of the Neilgherry Hills there were found 455 
 males to 249 females. Marshall's general examination of the 
 Todas shows the percentage of the sexes to be 100 males to 75 
 females. No female infanticide could be learned of. Amongst 
 civilized people there is a slight excess of male births. Between the 
 ages of fifteen and twenty the sexes are in about equal numbers. 
 After that, the females predominate. In polygamous countries, 
 however, there is generally a large excess of female births. This is 
 the case in most of Asia Minor, Morocco, amongst the Mormons, 
 etc. In some of these places there are as many as three to one in 
 favor of the females. 
 
Marriage, 85 
 
 Nourishment and condition seem to have something to do with 
 this proportion. The more hardship and distress, the greater the 
 excess of males. 
 
 Country districts show a male excess. 
 City districts show a female excess. 
 Rich people show a female excess. 
 Poor people show a male excess. 
 
 Ploss' Saxon figures show a greater excess of male births in the 
 highlands than in the lowlands. The conditions amongst poly- 
 androus peoples are unfavorable, and the pressure of population is 
 continuously against an inadequate subsistence. This may be an 
 explanation of the great excess of males in the births amongst them. 
 
 Evolution of Sex is a very valuable book by Geddes and Thomp- 
 son. The results of investigation and experiment to the present 
 time are by them shown to indicate a connection between food and 
 conditions and the determination of sex in reproduction. As food is 
 plenty and conditions favorable, so is the proportion of females 
 greatest. The contrary produces most males. Parthenogenetic life 
 is especially affected by nutrition and condition. Under the most 
 favorable circumstances asexual reproduction is greatly prolonged or 
 continuous. It is only with unfavorable change that the male appears 
 and sexual reproduction takes place. The normal sex proportion 
 amongst tadpoles is 57 females in the hundred ; by care and feeding, 
 this has been changed to 92 females in the hundred. Gentry and 
 Treat have shown the same thing to be true of bees, caterpillars, and 
 aphidae, Von Siebold as to wasps, and Rolph as to the Artemia salina. 
 Giron's experiments with sheep indicate similar results amongst 
 mammals. He took 150 ewes on good feed and bred them to two young 
 rams. The progeny showed 60 females to the hundred. One hundred 
 and fifty other ewes he put on poor food and bred to two old rams. 
 The progeny in this case showed 40 females in the hundred. It 
 seems a happy provision that, under favoring conditions, the female — 
 conservative, non-progressive, or anabolic — type of life should prevail, 
 while, with unfavorable ones, the male— variable, originating, or 
 katabolic — type should predominate in the interest of change and 
 progress. 
 
 Crossing has a tendency to produce females. Amongst mulattoes 
 there is an excess of 12 to 15 per cent, of females. The cross-breeds 
 on the Pacific coast, Mexico, and Nicaragua show the same. Horses 
 and cattle of different colors generally bear females. Jewish mar- 
 riages with other races, from the following small example, may be 
 taken to show the same. 
 
86 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 Of ii8 such marriages, 28 were sterile. To the others were born 
 145 female and 122 male children. The ratio would be 118.82 
 females to 100 males. 
 
 On the other hand, regular Jewish marriages between Jews show 
 a ratio of 114.50 males to 100 females (Jacobs). Marriages of kins- 
 folk tend to produce males. In-breeding of animals does the same. 
 The Talmud mentions the fact of crosses running to females. Ille- 
 gitimate unions tend to female children also (Westermarck's 
 History of Human Marriage). 
 
 McIycUan is the main authority for polyandry. In view of the 
 ignorance of Mclycllan {Primitive Marriage) as to the gentes rules 
 of marriage which his descriptions suggest, it may well be doubted 
 whether this polyandry of his is not after all Punaluan marriage, or 
 at most a peculiar and very local aberration from it. There is no 
 known system of consanguinity to indicate a past or present poly- 
 andry, as differentiated from a combined polyandry and polygamy 
 of the group-marriage systems. 
 
 These systems of consanguinity are now the evidence to be most 
 relied on as to marriage types. They are set forth in full in Dr. 
 Morgan's works, but are conveniently abridged in his Ancient Society. 
 
 Polygamy is a frequent form of marriage amongst savages and 
 barbarians. It is more suited to the military type of society than 
 polyandry, and perhaps even more than monogamy. It may have 
 grown out of military contests. Captured women would be looked 
 on as property, as we know that they are amongst savage men. 
 Their use being largely for sexual gratification, their captors would 
 naturally guard their chastity. Out of this feeling could grow the 
 desire to protect the chastity of the women born in the tribe, as well 
 as that of those brought into it, and also from this idea of property 
 probably came that of the purchase and sale of women. However, 
 I wish it understood that I believe the feeling or instinct for sexual 
 limitation, which we have formalized into varying marriage rules, 
 comes to us from pre-human ancestors. 
 
 Polygamy strengthens the family by making the paternity of the 
 children secure, and consequently lends itself to a better and more 
 powerful organization of society than any group system. Under it, 
 the strongest and most capable men will do the breeding. It is a 
 form which has had its value and has enabled mankind to progress 
 and to perform great things. Its weakness is that a number of wives 
 are not likely to be, and in practice are not, satisfied with the divided 
 attentions of one man. To secure their chastity, therefore, the 
 women must be mewed up and guarded. So in those polygamous 
 countries, where the type is at its highest, we find the women 
 
Marriage, 87 
 
 imprisoned in harems and guarded by that invention of polygamy, 
 the eunuch. Thus the women, having little opportunity to use their 
 faculties, do not improve, and what the child gains from the activities 
 of its father it loses from the inactivity of its mother. The qualities 
 and capacities of the father may be developed and improved by use 
 in polygamy, and the men with strong character will monopolize the 
 women to the exclusion of the weaker individuals. But the women 
 having no chance of improvement, what is gained on one side is lost 
 on the other, and the family cohesion necessary for at least a certain 
 period of human progress is not possible, owing to the divided 
 maternal ancestry and the consequent rivalries. 
 
 In the patriarchal governments in which marriage was often 
 polygamous (probably originally pastoral ones), the progress was 
 accompanied by a subordination of both wives and children. This 
 in the end defeated itself, for too great subordination in both cases 
 necessarily prevented the use of the faculties or the development 
 of individuality and character. Society has long vibrated between 
 the extremes of no family control and too much family control. 
 We cannot seem to stop at the juste milieu or else that point 
 varies. 
 
 Monogamy is also found amongst savages of a ve^ primitive 
 type like the wood-Veddahs, whose mode of life in tropical forests 
 forces the man to live alone, or with his wife only, for a consid- 
 erable portion of the year. This Veddah marriage is probably Syn- 
 dyasmian, a pairing to last at pleasure. It must also be noted that, 
 as a practice, polygamy is never universal in a tribe. Either pov- 
 erty and inability to support more than one wife, or the scarcity and 
 consequent value of women, or both, necessarily limit polygamy to 
 a few. The general observation is that from Utah to Central Africa 
 the majority of married persons in polygamous countries lead a 
 monogamous life. 
 
 While it is true that primitive man is found with monogamy, it 
 seems in these cases more a matter of the conditions of life than a 
 recognition of the family or of the importance of procreation. As 
 a lion or tiger will pair off with one female of its species, so do these 
 men with a female of the tribe. This condition is not conducive to 
 high progress. The division of labor and the help of one another, 
 necessary to the highest civilization, are only possible with a certain 
 gregariousness. 
 
 In the gregarious life amongst the animals, we see only promis- 
 cuity or a sort of polygamy in which sexual intercourse is limited by 
 a fighting male. The monogamy we now have in the world, it 
 would seem, must have sprung from an evolution out of Syndyasmian 
 
88 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 marriage or from polygamy. In polygamy we have the first sense 
 of ownership of the woman, and therefore the first legal desire to 
 monopolize her body. From this comes the security of paternity. 
 These feelings permeating the tribe and the improved social possi- 
 bilities advancing their position and developing their capacities, we 
 have a higher standard of living, to the perfection of which fewer 
 can arrive. Consequently few men have more than one wife, and 
 the formation of an opinion favored by the condition of the majority 
 against polygamy is probable. Karly Jewish marriages were often- 
 polygamous. We may reasonably presume that the evolution from 
 polygamy to monogamy in the Jews has had many counterparts^ 
 especially in those societies coming out of a patriarchal system. 
 
 Spencer's Prificiples of Sociology, Morgan's Ancient Society, and 
 Mclycllan's Traces of Early History are good books in which to 
 study the origin of the family. McLellan, however, falls into many 
 errors. The general view which these works give of the growth of 
 the morals of man in the sexual relation is striking. 
 
 From promiscuity to our present condition of monogamy, with 
 only the weaker members falling away into prostitution, is a great 
 and wonderful advance. When, however, conditions become unfav- 
 orable, we have periods of decay, and a reversion to these primitive 
 practices of license. Each fall, however, seems less low than the 
 last, and each rise, greater. 
 
 The progress in the opinion of men in the license of war is 
 marked. At first the women were captured and held permanently 
 for wives, concubines, or slaves. Gradually we see this practice re- 
 laxing, but the armed conquerors, while relinquishing the permanent 
 enjoyment of the charms of defenceless women, still exacting a tem- 
 porary penalty. So all the wars of the Huns, Goths, Vandals, Sara- 
 cens, etc., were marked by the rape of matrons and the violation of 
 virgins in the enemies' country whenever opportunity occurred^ 
 though they did not carry the women off as had been the case be- 
 fore. The story of the capture of the Sabine women by the Romans 
 and their retention for wives is an instance of the earlier practices in 
 this regard. 
 
 The Saracens when conquering Asia Minor were offered by their 
 officers, from the cities to be conquered, the most beautiful women 
 for their use. The Arab soldiers in the trenches and on their deserts, 
 with primitive ideas of sexual intercourse, were exalted by their 
 dreams and ideals which the results of rape could never realize. To- 
 day, in our wars, rape of a general character, such for instance as is 
 said to have been committed on the Romans by the soldiers of 
 Charles V., not so very long ago, is neither practised by the con- 
 
Marriage, 89 
 
 querors nor dreaded by the vanquished. This is, indeed, an ad- 
 vance. 
 
 While monogamy has advantages which carry man beyond any 
 other system, the liberty of women it allows, and must allow for its 
 best results, or rather best results for the future race, causes many 
 to fall into prostitution. This again weeds out the inferior natures, 
 for prostitutes, speaking generally, breed but little. 
 
 In monogamy, for the security of paternity given by the limita- 
 tion of sexual intercourse, the man gives protection to the woman 
 and child in sickness and in health, and in age as in youth. For 
 woman, the marriage contract is a boon immediate and personal. For 
 the man, it is a boon immediate and personal. Which sex gains the 
 more, it is hard to say ; but which loses the more, where the society 
 or the individual do not live sexually in marriage, is clear. It is the 
 woman. 
 
 The strength and position of any nation now may be gauged by 
 an accurate statement of its marriage system in practice thirty to 
 fifty years before the period at which the estimate is to be made. The 
 future condition may be foreseen by its actual practice in this regard. 
 
 As soon as a people demanded chastity of the mothers and cer- 
 tainty of the paternity of the children to one man, they passed other 
 nations not taking this course, as though these had been stationary. 
 In this connection, it may be well to call attention to the indication 
 that from the earliest geological epoch, as well as from the earliest 
 traces of man, we have every reason to think that progress has been 
 always increasing its speed. From the almost inconceivable slow- 
 ness of the first period of organized life, it has come to a pace that in 
 our own time is quite appreciable even in 1,000 years. 
 
 The evolution of man has certain well known lines from which 
 the only escape is the final death of extinction. Man is bom, de- 
 velops, reaches maturity, decays, and dies. The atoms and particles 
 of which he is composed go through the same history. They are 
 bom, develop, mature, decay, die, and are eliminated from our 
 systems to be replaced by other atoms. The body while apparently 
 the same, or undergoing change but slowly, is in reality entirely 
 changed in its composition within very short periods ; and a young 
 man may within a year not contain a single atom of flesh matter that 
 was a part of himself the year before. 
 
 What is true of the individual, is tme of society. Its atoms are 
 men. Society changes slowly, almost imperceptibly, like the man ; 
 but men, the atoms, are continually developing, maturing, dying, 
 and being replaced by others, while the society of which they are 
 the living parts maintains its general characteristics. 
 
90 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 The short life of man, the unit of society, makes it absolutely 
 essential that he should reproduce himself, or else society must die 
 and mankind become extinct. The atoms in man have different 
 functions : some carry on the work of digestion, as in the stomach or 
 liver ; others, locomotion, as in the legs ; others, elimination, as in the 
 skin and kidneys ; and others, the intelligence that governs the whole, 
 as in the brain. Bach set must exist and be replaced by its kind. 
 An ancient Roman saw and used this analogy to society. Human 
 society, however, is not as yet thus fixed in its reproduction. The 
 idea has nevertheless been formulated in governments, most notably 
 among the Hindoos, and is a general tendency of social organiza- 
 tions. 
 
 Thus far, however, the brain atoms of human society have been 
 unable to maintain their reproductive power. These brain atoms of 
 society have been continually replaced by other new atoms from 
 lower strata, simply through the loss or neglect of the reproductive 
 power in the higher men. The brain of Egyptian, Assyrian, Greek, 
 and Roma-n society has died and become extinct. So progress has 
 been retarded. 
 
 Thus it is seen that the line of advance of man exacts reproduc- 
 tion. The penalty of non-fulfilment of this law to the individual or 
 to the race is death, permanent death and extinction. 
 
 The history of evolution, as written in the rocks, is strewn with' 
 wrecks. Mollusks, fishes, and saurians show, each in their special 
 periods, wonderful developments in size and power. Amongst the 
 mammals the mammoth, mastodon, and American elephant showed 
 a greater size and physical power than anything we now have ; so 
 also we see that gigantic horses, deer, beavers, tapirs, and oxen 
 with horns nine feet from tip to tip once roamed on the earth. The 
 fire of true progress, however, was carried by what must have been 
 deemed an inferior animal, the ancestor of man, and the greatest de- 
 velopments in other lines are now dead and extinct. 
 
 So also with man, from him of Neanderthal or Men tone down, 
 race after race, civilization after civilization, some remarkedly devel- 
 oped or organized in one line and some in another have arisen, been 
 found wanting, and, like the great saurians and mammals, are now 
 dead and out of sight. 
 
 These considerations should cause us to continually study and 
 reflect to see how we may escape a fate so general and move on in 
 the tide of progress. 
 
 Marriage has now two extremes, both of which are bad and one 
 is fatal. One is the harem of polygam3^ Under this system, 
 sexual pleasure has complete dominion and the reproductive powers 
 
Marriage, 9 1 
 
 are secondary. The girls are sometimes circumcised by the cutting 
 of the clitoris at the age of seven ; after this they become eligible 
 as wives. Usually by ten or twelve they are such, and very rarely 
 over sixteen when married. The consequence of this is that the 
 organs of generation are frequently injured by premature use, and 
 the sterility so common amongst the women of polygamous com- 
 munities is doubtless largely due to this cause. It is also probably 
 often due to premature and excessive sexual indulgence, and to the 
 almost exclusive cultivation of sexual passion in the thoughts and 
 acts of the harem. 
 
 The children bom of children cannot be fully developed. The 
 girls themselves, being immured and guarded beyond the possibility 
 of fully using any of their instincts of self-protection, necessarily lack 
 character and self-reliance. The children must inherit these unused 
 functions and be weak in them. From most points of view, the 
 harem system is defective. This system, however, provides for 
 the sterility of a wife, by its permission to marry many without 
 casting off the sterile one. 
 
 On the other extreme is what we may call the present native New 
 England condition of marriage. Here we have an intense pressure 
 on the nervous system of young girls, to develop the memory and 
 intellect without a corresponding regard for the body. As a conse- 
 quence, the women are often physically imperfect and delicate, with 
 a diminished natural taste for the duties and delights of a wife, and 
 a lessened capacity for the grand creative functions of the mother. 
 Besides this absolute lessening of the instincts leading to reproduc- 
 tion and absolute lessening of the physical power to be a mother, the 
 whole tendency of the New England method of bringing up young 
 women is to cultivate ambitions inconsistent with maternity. The 
 sexual instincts are effaced and the godlike power of creation in 
 motherhood is always neglected or belittled and often actually con- 
 demned. 
 
 This educational system, like its extreme opposite, induces innate 
 sterility, and equally like the Mohammedan leads to practices caus- 
 ing artificial sterility. Under both these systems women become 
 barren from physical causes. 
 
 The polygamous system is bad, the New England system is fatal. 
 The first encourages beyond nature the instincts leading to fertility 
 and consequently weakens reproduction. The second discourages 
 both the instinct and its result. 
 
 The low birth-rate in New England, the weakness of reproduction 
 amongst the native Americans, and the replacement of the original 
 American stock by immigrants have been attributed to climatic rea- 
 
92 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 sons. The Province of Quebec, with a climate more severe than that 
 of New England, was settled by the French at about the same time 
 that New England commenced its life. This French stock, repro- 
 ductively weak at home, has become strong here and is even flowing 
 over into New England. Seven elevenths of the births in New Eng- 
 land are now of Catholic parents. Consequently, with two such 
 diverse results in similar climates, we must eliminate climate as the 
 cause. The difference in reproductive power between the English 
 and French at home was institutions, manners, and customs. The 
 same causes have turned the tables here. The French Canadians 
 are sound on reproduction ; the native New Englanders are not. 
 Therefore, the French are replacing them. Unless reform comes, no 
 New Englanders of the original stock will be left in New Eng- 
 land within a few generations. 
 
 Man must reproduce or become extinct. Monogamj^ is the best 
 form of securing healthy, well-cared-for, and well-developed progeny. 
 Any system of society or marriage which does not insist on the 
 necessity of reproduction is an aberration furnishing a passport to 
 death and extermination. The instinct of reproduction in civilized 
 man is more and more controlled by the reason and therefore by 
 government. As men develop and as they reach a certain point in 
 wealth and intelligence they continually stumble into this aberration 
 of sterility. As a consequence, the upper classes continually disap- 
 pear, extinguished by their own acts and sink into the black death 
 of deaths from which no renewed self, no child, no flesh of their own 
 flesh carries on their likeness and their life to the future perfect race. 
 
 The sexual reproductive instincts of the lower animals are in- 
 tensified and spiritualized in all harmoniously developed men. This 
 instinct, in its best form, we call love. 
 
 As man has the highest spiritualized instinct of reproduction in 
 love, and has even a still higher capacity of appreciation of the re- 
 productive act by the power of the reason to comprehend its god- 
 like possibilities and its material promise of immortality, so also he 
 has the faculty of a complete abuse and prostitution in lust of this 
 wonderful power, unknown to any lower animal. 
 
 Thus man's reproductive acts are lifted by nature, through love, 
 far above those of the animals, and may be still further elevated by 
 the reason, through the recognition of the immortalizing feature of 
 these acts. But man has also the capacity of debasing the instincts 
 leading to reproduction far below those of the animals, and of leading 
 these instincts into fruitless paths of passion. 
 
 Ivove is tmknown where marriage is unknown. It is weak where 
 marriage is weak. In times when marriage lacks consideration love 
 
Marriage, 93 
 
 is despised. Therefore love may be deemed the outcome of mar- 
 riage. In primitive life conjugal love anses, when it arises at all, 
 after the birth of children. 
 
 The main point of excellence and superiority of marriage is that 
 it furnishes to the man through the certainty of paternity, and by 
 means of his child, his renewed and immortalized self, a motive for 
 thought, invention, and work applying to things he can only enjoy 
 through his child, his new self, which nothing else has given or can 
 give. 
 
 From these considerations it is clear that marriage without chil- 
 dren is like the rose without its flower, like the fruit tree without its 
 fruit, like the wheat field without its grain. Without progeny it is 
 an idle and unreasonable rule. 
 
 The folk-lore of Germany describes marriage without children as 
 the world without the sun. Amongst a number of tribes marriage 
 did not take place until the birth of a child, — a practice we may 
 find traces of in numerous betrothal customs, some historical and 
 others existing. By these customs a betrothal, as far as sexual inter- 
 course was concerned, was equivalent to our marriage. 
 
 Sexual intercourse, unhallowed by the creation of the child, is 
 lust. The marriage tie under such circumstances partakes of the 
 character of the laws prevailing in some countries for the licensing 
 of courtesans, except that it licenses and limits both sexes for 
 prostitution. 
 
 To the woman without children there might be some compensa- 
 tion for the limitation required by marriage in the security of care 
 in ugliness and old age, but for the male there is nothing in being 
 tied to one prostitute or companion for lust after she has lost her 
 physical attractions. 
 
 Our civilization has come to the point come to by others dead and 
 gone in the ages of the past, where the higher types avoid having 
 children or refuse to be bothered with them at all. Prevention of 
 conception or abortion is notoriously the rule in intelligent commu- 
 nities, and marriage may be for companionship, for money, for lust, 
 for anything, but it is not for the child. Still real marriage is for 
 the child, and its whole reason for being rests on procreation. If 
 this be a correct conception of the condition to which conjugal life 
 has come in our community, we can understand one reason why 
 men are more and more marrying late or refusing to marry at all. 
 
 Without the desire for children they prefer prostitutes to wives, for 
 the former are changeable at pleasure, and are consequently more 
 studious to please than the wife, and need not be lived with when 
 passie. There are good reasons to think that the men have had 
 
94 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 something to do with this idea of not having children. However it 
 commenced, it is the women who suffer most from it. The men 
 lose a great deal — the cream of life, in fact, — but the women lose 
 ever^^thing. 
 
 A wife without children is a mere sewer to pass off the unfruitful 
 and degraded passions and lust of one man. It is perfectly certain 
 that a wife without children can never have the regard, respect, and 
 love of the husband that the wife-mother has who in children blends 
 her husband and herself in a new being, who will lift the spark of 
 both lives from their dying embers, and carry it flaming to a possible 
 material immortality. 
 
 The experience of those who have sinned can alone give voice to 
 its pain and inferiority over righteousness. Ripe, complete love only 
 comes with the ripe and complete fruit of love — that is, the child. 
 
 The kiss and the embrace of the wife-mother and of the husband- 
 father has possibilities of holy and intense pleasure which that of 
 mere lustful companionship never gives, and never can give. The 
 entire relation of husband and wife, man and woman, after fruit in 
 children, may be and ought to be intensified and sanctified in its joy 
 and happiness. Their unity receives its seal in the glory of creation. 
 For parents there is no old age, no death. Their lives and youth are 
 renewed, and blossom in themselves new-bom, the offspring of their 
 loins. The parents live again, are young again, and may be im- 
 mortal in the child. 
 
 Marriage without children is an empty, unreasonable piece of 
 nonsense, a mere aberration, a preliminary of extermination. The 
 child is the bond of marriage. In it the husband and wife are 
 united. The death of the bond is the only divorce. 
 
 lyove has so ill-defined a meaning with most persons and is applied 
 to so many of our feelings that it is necessary to set down clearly 
 what is meant when the word love is used. The poverty of our 
 language obliges us to use this word for describing sentiments of 
 exceedingly different kind. 
 
 Dr. Louis de Ser6 says : * ' Of all human passions love is the one 
 that moves and unites souls most powerfully, the one that awakens 
 the noblest and most generous feelings, and above all exercises the 
 strongest sway over the senses to the extent of leading impassioned 
 natures to the greatest excesses." Its manifestations are clearly 
 recognizable in insects, fishes, and in animals. Ornament, color, 
 song, self-sacrifice, and courtship are all found in the life below us. 
 Montegazza in his Physiology of Love says that the whole of nature is 
 a hymn of love. The chirping of insects, the croaking of frogs, the 
 songs of birds, the cries of animals, the love dance of the firefly, the 
 
Marriage, 95 
 
 colors and odors of flowers, are all intimately connected with repro- 
 duction. Humanity has no monopoly in this matter. Our sex love 
 is only different in degree. 
 
 As it is here spoken of, love means that budding out and spiritu- 
 alization of the reproductive instincts coming to humanity after the 
 age of puberty. It may exist without any knowledge of the repro- 
 ductive functions, and without any recognition of what this springs 
 from or what it ought to produce — that is, children. 
 
 While a special Indian Commissioner in the Southwest, I was 
 much struck by the total absence of caresses between the sexes 
 amongst the Indians. An Australian traveller mentions the same 
 fact and says specifically that he never saw a savage man place his 
 arm around the waist of a woman. Monteiro in his Tribes of Africa 
 speaks of the absence of love and caresses ; Lichtenstein, Du Chaillu, 
 and others have observed this peculiarity. Spencer's researches con- 
 firm this absence of love amongst savages. 
 
 The fact that these observations apply largely, if not entirely, to 
 communities where marriage is of the Punaluan or group order 
 gives a reasonable explanation of why love — the spiritualization of 
 reproduction — should be in abeyance or absent. 
 
 Love in its complete sense is of modem origin. Its first mani- 
 festations were doubtless individualized and recognized sexual desire. 
 This we now see refined into romantic love before marriage in which 
 sexual gratification may play no recognized part. This is the ideal 
 desire for reproduction, and is not real love. The highest form of 
 love is conjugal. This is the real thing, a thing and not an ideal. 
 
 Romantic love is full of illusions and extremes, ecstasies of joy or 
 sorrow, hope or despair, running into a sickness like madness. It is 
 necessarily temporary and, if its end be not achieved, recurrent. 
 Conjugal love is smooth and deep, strong and constant ; it cannot 
 exist without respect. The first is the flashing lighthouse that 
 shows us a port ; and the second, the harbor itself in which we com- 
 mand more than the riches of the world by our commerce of love. 
 
 In modem love the gratification of the imagination surpasses the 
 gratification of the body, and the sensual is surpassed by the 
 spiritual. Love probably has some development even amongst the 
 primitive societies where these are upon the individual basis, and for 
 that matter amongst birds and animals also. 
 
 Numerous observations of male regard for the female in various 
 tribes are of record, and the higher position of woman and her relief 
 from the severity of outside labor would indicate that such must be 
 the case. The stories and songs of the Arabs show also that at least 
 at their stage of development love is known. 
 
g6 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 Jealousy is an instinct common to many animals and birds, as 
 well as man. It is useful in preserving the purity of the breed and 
 the productiveness of the female injured or destroyed by promiscuity. 
 It is a feeling out of which some of our ideas as to limitation of 
 sexual intercourse and marriage may have arisen. But that it is an 
 outgrowth of the highest form of love is not to be lightly admitted. 
 It would carry us down to the dogs in our ideals. 
 
 Jealousy amongst men is generally found strongest in societies 
 where the moral tone as to women is low, as in Southern Italy, 
 Spain, etc. 
 
 The jealousy of women in polygamous households is a fair indi- 
 cation as to the extent of the development of their tender feelings. 
 Without some sort of love there cannot be jealousy. So amongst the 
 primitive militant types from which our development comes the 
 absence of the caress is accompanied by the absence of jealousy, and, 
 by inference, of love also. At the same time, we must recognize the 
 evident fact that the modem strength and power of love is still 
 unknown and unfelt by a large part of the population in even our 
 most civilized countries. Its highest manifestation, as a rule, is an 
 accompaniment of brain development. 
 
 lyOve commonly appears in girls and boys considerably before 
 they are suflSciently mature to either bear good children or support 
 the physical effort necessary for this great result. This premature 
 ,effect may be avoided or postponed by healthy outdoor occupation 
 and exercise. These first flowers of love, like the first flowers of the 
 rose, are never perfect, and this splendid instinct should not be 
 trusted until it is in its prime, say at 25 years in the man, and at 18 
 in the woman. At these ages the instinct seldom errs. 
 
 Love is never complete and perfect, no matter how much the 
 passions common to the lower animals may mislead one, until the 
 fruit — that is, the child — comes. It is then, if ever, that men and 
 women really love each other in a true and complete wa3^ All the 
 other dreams, etherealizations, self-effacement, or gusts of passion are 
 but the preliminaries, the preparation, cultivation, and seeding of the 
 ground. 
 
 lyOve, like the fruit of the grain, is only in existence when the 
 harvest is ready to gather. In some sensitive human beings love's 
 preliminaries are often abnormally developed, and cause sickness, 
 melancholy, and even death. Such sensitive ones must be carefully 
 tended, not noticing much their ailments, or speaking of its cause, 
 but giving them, by action, occupation, or change of scene, a means 
 of diverting the energy from a great but perverted instinct, and allow- 
 ing the animal balance to become established. Love is much more 
 
Marriage, 97 
 
 apt to develop fully and, unfortunately, to become perverted or un- 
 controllable in the virtuous than in the licentious. As soon, there- 
 fore, as the bodily powers are fully developed, marriage should be 
 encouraged, if for no other reason to give love a healthy and moral 
 means of expansion and growth. If this is not done trouble is 
 almost sure to ensue, either to the constitution and body, or to the 
 morals and the mind. 
 
 IvOve is, after all, in the mature, the best guide to marriage. But 
 this is not true in childhood or in old age. Love is the guide the 
 highest development of nature gives us. 
 
 Natural marriages, that is, those where the inclinations at the 
 age of full maturity have alone had play, are almost always between 
 persons of different mental and nerve tendencies. It is a commonly 
 received opinion that such marriages are the happiest. 
 
 In civilized countries, and in fact in all countries, things other 
 than the natural inclinations play a prominent part in selections of 
 life partners. The chapters on the selection of a husband or a wife 
 discuss this subject. A very important thing to consider in advising 
 early marriage is its bearing on the health of body, mind, and 
 morals. 
 
 The vital statistics of every country that has taken the marriage 
 relation into consideration show an increased prospect of life for the 
 married — that is, the death-rate is higher amongst the single than 
 amongst the married. When we consider the amount of disease and 
 misery that each extra death represents, we can perceive the import- 
 ance of this matter. For each person that dies there are a consider- 
 able number of sick. As there are more deaths proportionately 
 amongst the single than amongst the married, there must be vastly 
 more sickness amongst the single also. 
 
 Of moral disease we have no account, and probably need none, 
 to know which of the two conditions is healthier. A well considered 
 marriage demands and leads to morality. The immorality of the 
 race is largely monopolized by the single. It must be remembered 
 here that a man or woman without children is really single, though 
 nominally married. Married men, whose wives from one cause or 
 another do not sufficiently fill the position of spouse, are large sup- 
 porters of vice.' 
 
 The health of the mind is equally with that of the body and the 
 morals affected by marriage. Insanity is more prevalent amongst 
 the single than amongst the married, and crime and suicide also. 
 
 In Switzerland two fifths of the divorces are of sterile couples, 
 while sterile marriages are but one fifth of all marriages. We can 
 thus note the marked effect of sterility in weakening the marriage tie. 
 
98 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 The figures compiled by the l^ondiQw Jouryial of Institute Actuaries 
 in 1 88 1 gives the death-rate per thousand amongst married and sin- 
 gle women, from the age of 15 upwards, as follows : 
 
 Married. . . 89,703. 
 Single . . . 90,174- 
 
 More recent statistics in England are as follows: Of each 1,000 
 men who marry, 861 are bachelors and 139 widowers, while of 
 each 1,000 women only 98 have been married before, and 902 
 are spinsters. Twelve marriages out of every 100 are second mar- 
 riages. The average age at which men marry is about 27, while 
 the average at which women marry is about 25 years. Out of every 
 1,000 persons, 602 are unmarried, 345 are married, and 53 widowed. 
 Over one half of all the women between 15 and 45 are unmarried. 
 Married women live two years longer than single ones. If the 
 mother dies first the father survives 9I years, but if the father dies 
 first the survival of the mother is 1 1 J years as an average. Two 
 thousand four hundred and forty-one births occur in England daily. 
 February is the month in which the greatest number of births occur ; 
 June, the month in which occur the fewest. The average number of 
 births for each marriage is 4.33. In every 1,000 births 11 are twins. 
 
 Statistics from the census of 1890 show that in a class of Jews 
 sufficiently superior to fill out and return the ofiicial blanks sent 
 them, the death-rate of married women is higher up to the age of 
 35 than that of the single women, but the married women having 
 passed that age the death-rate changes in a marked manner, and the 
 rate is higher amongst the single than amongst the married. The 
 death-rate is always higher amongst these Jewish men when single 
 than when married. The figures for this class of Jews show further 
 that marriages take place later in life than amongst the general pop- 
 ulation. The excess of married women's mortality over the single is 
 between the ages of 25 and 35, and not before or after. It is conse- 
 quently a fair presumption that the unfavorable figures for married 
 women covering but one decade are at least partly due to late mar- 
 riages and the well-known increased risk of first births after the age 
 of 23 or 24. 
 
 The life-insurance companies are operated on a business and not 
 upon a sentimental basis. The extra fee of five dollars for every 
 thousand insured which the largest of these companies now impose 
 on single and childless women over married mothers is an indica- 
 tion in the same line. 
 
 If it be true that there are 23,000 divorces in the United States to 
 21,000 in all the other portions of the world, we must admit an un- 
 
Marriage, 
 
 99 
 
 healthy condition of the marriage relation in our country. If figures 
 for America, therefore, are in any way less strikingly favorable to 
 the married for health and longevity than in other countries, we may 
 presume that the bad and abnormal condition of marriage with us 
 has diminished its good effects. We may claim with some reason that 
 children, being the foundation-stone of marriage, and the only object 
 for its legal limitations in sexual matters, can not be avoided or 
 aborted without so injuring the foundation as to reflect itself on both 
 the health and happiness of the married. Thus we see vitality de- 
 crease showing less health, and divorce increase showing less happi- 
 ness. With all its present shortcomings, however, the married state 
 still shows us the healthiest and happiest of our population. In fact, 
 after the age of thirty-five there is little, if any, health or happiness 
 outside of the marriage relation. 
 
 Maudsley, quoting from a number of investigations on insanity, 
 shows that the percentage of insanity is higher amongst single 
 women than amongst the married. If the childless wives, or those 
 with but one or two children, were taken from the married, the fig- 
 ures would doubtless be more striking. 
 
 The preventive measures against conception adopted by many 
 married persons are deemed by the best doctors to be injurious to 
 both parties. Incomplete intercourse seems to be the cause of much 
 ill-health in married men who adopt this method of limiting progeny, 
 especially of nervous disarrangements, such as nervous dyspepsia 
 and various forms of paralysis. Amongst wives similar results are 
 produced, and the abortions and miscarriages which they bring on 
 when they find themselves pregnant increase very materially the 
 death-rate. It is said that 9,000 women die annually in America 
 from abortions. 
 
 A physician in good practice in a summer resort informs me that 
 in his practice the treatment of women for the sequelae of miscarriage 
 bears the ratio to conceptions going to term of six to seven. Six 
 abortions to seven births is certainly a bad condition, especially 
 when we contemplate the large number of miscarriages that are 
 likely never to come to a physician's ofiicial notice. The summer 
 resort may have offered a temptation to license inviting abortion for 
 escape from social penalties, or have been specially sought for recov- 
 ery after abortion elsewhere. 
 
 Were these abuses of matrimony excluded from the figures, the 
 balance of life in favor of a properly carried out marriage would 
 probably be startling. One thing may be said here in answer to the 
 idea of limiting at once poverty and population by limiting children, 
 and that is that the voluntary limitation of children has always hith- 
 
lOO The Conquest of Death, 
 
 erto, in all civilizations and societies, been by the intelligent and 
 well-to-do, with a result of the extermination of the best class and 
 the death of the society. It has not been by the poor and needy. 
 
 The condition of marriage in the United States is not good. Many 
 marriages are broken up on frivolous pretexts, and many others are 
 maintained in name but not in reality. The divorces in this country 
 have about doubled in proportion to the population in the last thirty 
 years. In the past twenty years we have granted 328,716 divorces. 
 In this State (California) there is now one divorce to 7.41 marriage 
 licenses. In the city of San Francisco there is one divorce in 5.78 
 marriages (Dike). 
 
 This condition of affairs shows a low and poor idea of the grand- 
 eur of marriage, and a large incapacity to realize its pre-eminent 
 happiness. It seems, therefore, appropriate here to give the causes 
 that make a divorce necessary. 
 
 ist. Sterility. — Without children no marriage should be main- 
 tained. 
 
 2d. Insanity. — This demands seclusion, prevents the pa^^ment of 
 the conjugal duty, and renders improbable the creation of proper 
 children. 
 
 3d. Conviction for Felony. — For same causes. 
 
 4th. Habitual Drunkenness. — For same causes. 
 
 5th. Adultery of Wife. — By this the security of paternity of the 
 children — the main object of marriage — is destroyed. 
 
 The demand for divorces on other grounds arises from the gross 
 and ctdpable ignorance of the people who thus destroy their own 
 happiness. Of the two most urgent causes of divorce, adultery of 
 the wife and sterility, one, sterility, is never pleaded, and in fact is, 
 in general, not a legal cause of divorce. Here is indeed a condition. 
 Incompatibility of temper a good cause, and sterility, which pre- 
 vents the realization of the object of matrimonj^ no cause. ^ Could 
 anything be more inconsequent ? 
 
 Insanity, as a rule, has to be proven before marriage to make it a 
 legal cause of divorce. And we see further that the adultery of the 
 wife is less and less in proportion to the other causes pleaded for 
 divorces as time carries us on. 
 
 Adultery on the part of the husband is a just cause of complaint 
 for the wife. Like polygamy it does not, however, destroy the 
 security of paternity of the children, which is the basis of all mar- 
 riage. It is in this respect essentially different from the adulter>^ 
 of the wife. We can therefore understand why adulter}^ of the 
 husband has not been a cause of divorce in numerous vigorous 
 societies in which the family was the recognized unit of power, such 
 
Marriage, loi 
 
 as that of early Rome. Adultery of the husband in the early history 
 of Rome appears to have been a marked exception. In every strong 
 social organization the family is strong. As it is strong, the ideal 
 and aim of domestic life must be high and pure ; as it is high and 
 pure, so must the life and aims of the husband be high and pure. 
 Adultery or sexual intercourse merely for animal gratification is 
 not consonant with this, and cannot exist with it. The reason that 
 we to-day have so much to complain of in this matter is the weaken- 
 ing of the family, and the gradual substitution of the individual for 
 the family as the unit of society. Nothing is more fatal to the ideal of 
 marriage, than the prevalent prevention of conception and destruction 
 of foetal life amongst the married. Children once removed as the aim 
 and object of marriage, this convention loses its backbone. 
 Dignity, force, and reason are lost to it, and marriage changes 
 from the staff and support of society to a reed that under any pres- 
 sure bends into fantastic shapes. When the high aim and the true 
 object of marriage is lost, when the married do not wish children or 
 do not appreciate the children they have, and lose or never have a 
 realization of their renewed life and material immortality in their 
 children, the tie is weak, and marriage responsibilities and limi- 
 tations become burdensome. 
 
 In this condition divorce will be increasingly sought. Without 
 any grand unity of aim, without any ideal, without any true object, 
 we must expect to find small things dominate. Thus incompatibility 
 of temper becomes a legal reason for divorce, and the law, in one 
 frivolous pretext or another, ofiicially recognizes a precedent weak- 
 ening of family life. The remedy is not in restricting divorce, but in 
 changing and improving the appreciation of marriage — a difficult 
 thing indeed. How far society should go in permitting divorce for 
 petty causes, is an open question. I am inclined to the opinion that 
 when the married have a low view of the institution and wish to cut 
 the knot, they might as well be allowed to do so and thus legalize 
 what is already an accomplished fact. On the other hand, society 
 has heretofore depended on the integrity and strength of the family 
 for its integrity and strength, and it is a question how far it can 
 afford to legalize destructive and deadly conditions, even if they are 
 accomplished facts. 
 
 Sexual indulgence may exist between persons of the same sex — 
 between men and men, and between women and women, but 
 marriage has never been permitted between persons of the same sex. 
 Marriage is not for sexual gratification except as an incident. 
 
 The century plant blooms but once. Its seeds are perfected in its 
 death. Many insects die in the moment of reproduction. Humanity 
 
I02 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 has nothing so serious to face. On the contrary, children make the 
 one interest in old age, and are always a source of pleasure to persons 
 of normal feeling. Children make life worth living and make it 
 longer. Instead of dying in our moment of reproduction, we step 
 into new interests, new joys, and new hopes. We live anew and 
 multiply our highest hopes, interests, and joys. 
 
 As a recapitulation, we say : 
 
 I St. That child-bearing is an absolute necessity for the continued 
 existence of a man, a family, or a race. 
 
 2d. That marriage — monogamous, one wife, one husband — has 
 been found in the experience of mankind the best to secure and sup- 
 port children. 
 
 3d. That the object and only object of marriage is children. 
 
 4th. That this relation gives security of paternity and insures the 
 aid, support, and defence of the woman helpless in childbirth, and 
 of the child helpless in infancy, by the man thus knowing himself 
 the father. 
 
 5th. That monogamy secures the strongest foundation for the 
 family. The family being the foundation of the state, this form of 
 marriage is an essential to the best interests of society. 
 
 6th. That marriage without children is nothing. Marriage being 
 complete only with children, without children necessarily there can 
 be no true marriage. 
 
 The conclusion is beyond escape, that it is a religious duty for 
 all good members of society to marry so as to perpetuate the life of 
 themselves and of their family. 
 
 True marriage makes complete love possible. The loved one is 
 like the warmth-giving sun — all other lights are by it extinguished. 
 The single person or childless one lives in the night. The heavens 
 for such may indeed be full of stars, but there is for them no life- 
 giving, all-absorbing, creative sun. As a poet has it — 
 
 *' The night has a thousand eyes, 
 The day but one ; 
 Yet the light of the whole world dies 
 With the setting sun. 
 
 " The mind has a thousand eyes, 
 The heart but one ; 
 Yet the light of the whole life dies 
 When love is done." 
 
 The wedding-ring is a fitting emblem for marriage. The circle is 
 the Egyptian hieroglyph for eternity. The plain wedding-ring is the 
 
Marriage, 103 
 
 circle that completes, in so many countries, the marriage contract. 
 It is marriage, the true marriage with children in whom the life of 
 the united ones continues, that presents to us the best hope for 
 eternity. 
 
 Marry, then, my children. Make it a religion to have progeny. 
 Be thus natural, be thus happy, be thus great, be thus immortal. 
 
 Man in his Love doth blossom and bloom ; 
 
 What beauties he has can then be seen. 
 The height of the heart appears in the groom ; 
 
 The opening soul of the bride is queen. 
 
 The loves of the flowers and the loves of man 
 Conquer cold Death in their seeds of life ; 
 
 Love is the hand, with immortal span, 
 Alone can help us through Death's strife. 
 
 No flower with fertile seed can die, 
 
 No man with living child is dead ; 
 A body cold and dead may lie. 
 
 The old must wither and fade and shed. 
 
 Dark and dread is the night of Death, 
 
 The dead lie lost in its dreadful gloom, 
 A pestilence floats in its midnight breath, 
 
 And Terror's throne is the endless tomb. 
 
 Whatever of spirit drifts away. 
 
 Whatever of hope the truth may hide,~^~ 
 
 The body must go to ash or decay ; 
 
 We know Death's shadow is at our side. 
 
 But out of the old a new life grows. 
 
 Love lifts life to bloom anew ; 
 We cannot die if our child's life shows, 
 
 Immortal life in the child holds true. 
 
 What of the flower that blooms so free ? 
 
 In its day of love it spreads its charm. 
 Odor and color combine on the lea 
 
 To marry the flowers beyond Death's harm. 
 
 Out of their charms, out of their love, 
 
 Comes the seed that makes them live. 
 And so renewed from the life above 
 
 The flower immortal life doth give. 
 
I04 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 Out of our loves, out of our loins, 
 
 Springs a life never to die ; 
 We pay for the new in God's own coins 
 
 Our children carry our lives on high . 
 
 Silent and cold the conqueror conies. 
 Dark 
 Terrible 
 Death. 
 
 Glory I breathe in my child anew, 
 Conquering 
 Immortal 
 Life. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 HUSBAND CHOICE. 
 
 AMONGST certain birds and animals the female seems to have 
 some choice as to its mate and in many cases to play an 
 important part in this respect. We see at the mating time 
 the cock, of the pheasant, of the peacock, of the turkey, like the 
 males of many other birds, display their feathers and finery to the 
 quieter females presumably to attract their favorable attention. 
 
 We may account for the gay appearance of the male and the 
 more sober garb of the female in tame birds, on the ground that the 
 choice in mating seems to rest with the female. 
 
 Esthetic taste is widespread amongst birds and animals ; coloring, 
 crests, ornamentation, delicate odors, and harmonious sounds have 
 proved so attractive at the mating time that in spite of the dangers 
 which must attend the display of these advantages, in drawing the 
 attention of predatory animals, they have been perpetuated and de- 
 veloped by sexual selection. 
 
 Reptiles, fishes, and insects also frequently have sexual ornamen- 
 tation of one sort or another, and their ornamentation must be attended 
 by the same dangers as in animals. In plants beautiful colors and 
 sweet odors are also for reproduction, but in them there seems no 
 special danger in brilliancy or fragrance. This choice, however, 
 may be often annulled by a fighting mate. Thus has female selection 
 favored the evolution of ornament in the male. 
 
 Darwin takes this view, but Wallace, the independent discoverer 
 of evolution in the animal world, does not admit that such is the 
 case. His views may be summarized by saying that vigor and 
 beauty go together, and that it is at once the vigor which makes the 
 successful breeder and the beautiful male. The quiet colors of the 
 female bird may be attributed to the necessity of protection by 
 obscurity while they are hatching out their eggs. 
 
 In the early conditions of the races from which our present civili- 
 zation has come, woman has had but very little choice in the selec- 
 tion of her husband — much less than these birds. Perhaps the most 
 remote times of our ancestors, of which, however, we know almost 
 nothing, may have been an exception to this statement. Certain con- 
 
 105 
 
io6 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 ditions amongst primitive tribes would lend at least some color to 
 this possibility. However, during the times upon which we have 
 information, the woman has played only a passive part in mating. 
 
 Amongst certain tribes in Corea and amongst the Puttooalies, it 
 is said that the women are the uglier of the two sexes. It is even 
 ungallantly denied in our own country that the female is the better- 
 looking of the two, although it is a proverbial privilege of the male 
 to be ugly. However this may be, the artificial ornamentation of 
 women would indicate that if they are not now better-looking than 
 men this is the tendency. Consequently they may anticipate a 
 greater influence in marriage selection than they now enjoy ; that is, 
 if we take the ground that the female birds already referred to 
 really flock around the males to be chosen by them. 
 
 If this be the correct explanation, then we may anticipate an in- 
 creased power of choice in the beautiful female, for around her will 
 flock the men competing to be chosen. 
 
 Amongst savages, barbarians, and during the greater portion of 
 civilized man's existence, except under polyandry and in a few de- 
 graded tribes, a woman has been husbanded by capture, by compact 
 of parents, by purchase, or by the purchase of the husband by dot 
 or bounty as in modem France and other European countries, and 
 not generally by any choice of her own. 
 
 At certain epochs and among certain classes, women have had 
 more or less choice in this matter. Amongst the poor, natural selec- 
 tion has had more opportunity to operate than among the rich, which 
 may be one reason for the general incapacity of the rich to breed up. 
 On the other hand, the universal care of the ruling classes, in healthy, 
 civilized epochs, as to the disposition and marriage of their women, 
 and the equal care of their mothers by surviving families in retro- 
 gressive times, may be taken as a sign of strength and advance on 
 the part of the superior class. 
 
 Amongst many tribes of the industrial type, such as the Pueblos 
 of Arizona, the women have considerable to say in the choice of 
 their husbands. The traditions at least of a few militant societies 
 show a freedom of women in this choice also. It is doubtless a sur- 
 vival from a previous industrial organization, or the story of the 
 sexual relations under that type. The Arabian Nights give a num- 
 ber of instances where the women selected their own lovers or hus- 
 bands. Amongst the Pueblos the daughter is said to mention her 
 fancy for some man to her parents, who then inform the parents of 
 the favored youth, and these arrange the match. 
 
 During certain feasts in ancient times, as well as amongst still 
 existing tribes, the women had and still have a freedom of choice, at 
 
Husband Choice. 107 
 
 least of lovers. The curious laxity in this matter during particular 
 celebrations in antiquity is well known to students. It may not be 
 so well known that several tribes of our own Indians had the same 
 custom, and in certain celebrations the girls of the tribes danced and 
 chose young braves with whom they retired, but apparently with no 
 eventual marriage. 
 
 In America the woman now has more chance to choose and more 
 voice in making the marriage contract than anywhere else in the 
 civilized world. It may be observed that our civilization is also 
 more nearly industrial than any other. The initiation of courtship 
 is the man's, here as elsewhere, but a capable woman may, without 
 any breach of modesty or manners, do much to attract to her the 
 proper class of men for matrimony. 
 
 A woman perceiving a good man may properly do things in a 
 modest manner to attract him. In this matter, however, a young 
 woman must use great judgment. At times an initiative or at least 
 a plain encouragement will be well repaid, while at other times such 
 a course might cool if it did not disgust a suitor. 
 
 As a rule, a woman need not fear to make her preference plain, 
 not, however, omitting a judicious spice of coquetry. Widows, no 
 longer fresh and virgin, and from many points of view less desirable 
 than maids, still have a considerable success with men and secure 
 husbands oftener than their real merits warrant. We may attribute 
 this success to the plain preferences they show and to the open 
 encouragements they give. 
 
 It is well here to suggest to parents that it is not good policy to 
 show anxiety or even intention to secure a husband for a daughter. 
 It is, however, their highest duty to give their daughter the best 
 possible opportunity to become well mated in matrimony. Parents 
 should on no account neglect this matter of the first importance, and 
 should see to it that both sons and daughters are made acquainted 
 with eligible persons for life partners. 
 
 Woman has an intuitive perception as to the character of men, 
 gained probably from manners, intonations, expressions, and minor 
 acts. It is a basis of diagnosis which she is unable to formulate, but 
 her results and judgments are often accurate. She is in the position 
 of the Philadelphia rhymer of the last generation, who wrote of the 
 notorious Dr. Fell. 
 
 I do not like you, Dr. Fell, 
 The reason why I cannot tell, 
 But this I know, and know full well, 
 I do not like you, Dr. Fell." 
 
io8 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 This faculty of judgment is of great value to the woman. The 
 man has less of this intuitive perception of character, but his defi- 
 ciencies are to some extent made up by the experience he gains in 
 the world. A young woman should therefore never forget that while 
 she is judging the man, he is also judging her. The man's method 
 of life is reflected in his manners. His character, in spite of the 
 most studious suppression, will show in his indefinable expressions. 
 So will a woman's. 
 
 It is perhaps well for a woman to know that immorality to the 
 extent that it is indulged in, even of thought, will show in perceptible 
 though unformulatable ways. The power of judging character can 
 be developed by practice, and many persons even make a trade of it 
 in various quack and charlatan ways. 
 
 A woman should by no means neglect close observation and judg- 
 ment of persons. She should also remember that the keen man of 
 the world mentally catalogues women with considerable accuracy, 
 sometimes on sight, or at any rate after a short acquaintance. 
 There are amongst women : 
 
 Those who are regularly irregular. 
 Those who are irregularly irregular. 
 
 Those who have sinned once or a few times but have re- 
 formed. 
 Those who would sin if opportunity offered. 
 Those who do not wish to sin, but who would be too weak 
 
 to resist under circumstances favorable to the seducer. 
 Those who could only be seduced under exceptional condi- 
 tions. 
 Those who cannot be seduced, but may be violated. 
 Those who can only be violated when unconscious or when 
 bound. 
 These classes of character merge into each other. The man does 
 not perhaps consciously place each woman he meets in a class, but 
 if he is interested in her he adapts his manners and acts to the class 
 to which he has imconsciously assigned her. 
 
 Immoral and dissipated men are rarely mistaken in their opinions 
 of women. They know the women who can be improperly ap- 
 proached with certainty, those approachable with probability of 
 success, and those who cannot be approached at all. There are 
 some women like common prostitutes, who are so stamped by their 
 sin that they cannot escape from it, and are at once recognized by the 
 most casual glance. There are, on the other hand, women whom 
 one would as soon suspect of being professional poisoners and 
 assassins as being guilty of immorality. Their purity and honor are 
 
Husband Choice. 109 
 
 reflected from their souls into their faces, and they can do things with 
 impunity that would throw suspicion on even good women but of 
 less vigorous virtue. 
 
 The importance of this is to show the woman that, in attracting a 
 man for a husband, her best chances are in her best behavior, and 
 that error or immorality, though the act be never discovered, will in- 
 evitably show in those undefined signs the experienced so promptly 
 recognize. A desire or disposition to looseness is perfectly percepti- 
 ble in a person. 
 
 The extremes of virtue and vice show so clearly to even the inex- 
 perienced, that a moment's thought will show the girl that it is also 
 possible for the attentive observer to recognize the intermediate stages 
 as well, and to order her conduct accordingly. So guarding her own 
 conduct, she may observe with advantage the character of the men 
 who approach her. 
 
 While flirtation cannot be recommended to a yoimg maid ready 
 for marriage, and less probably in the future than now, there is a 
 cunning coyness that leads men on. Its success may be due to the 
 general but unsound estimate that the value of a thing is in propor-* 
 tion to the difi&culty of its attainment. As humanity is now consti- 
 tuted, we must not set up too rational a standard, or neglect such 
 successful means to an end as the usages of man make most avail- 
 able. Every man of merit has at least a secret pleasure in being 
 considered a hero or a genius. By finding his line of thought and 
 his aims, and by judicious drawing out and commendation, a man's 
 interest is invariably awakened, and he is attracted by the feeling 
 that he is appreciated. Thus may a maid attach to herself the 
 strongest of men. Othello won Desdemona by his heroism and 
 strength, and Desdemona won Othello by her open admiration and 
 attention. 
 
 The same course followed after marriage will do much to make 
 the man forget defeat and failure, and persist to success. A wife 
 can do much to prevent the wheat of worth from being choked out 
 by weeds of worthlessness springing strongest from neglect in the 
 richest soil. 
 
 There seem to be in this country two tendencies in marriage : 
 one toward the dot system in Europe ; and one toward a still greater 
 influence of women, even perhaps permitting to them an initiative in 
 marriage. 
 
 It must be remembered that a woman's freedom of choice has 
 come to amount to but little in most cases at this time. If she de- 
 sires to marry she will be risking much not to take the first good 
 man who presents himself, otherwise she may be left entirely tmhus- 
 
no The Conquest of Death. 
 
 banded. A woman, of course, of superior attractions, whether of 
 face, fortune, or fascinating manner, can afford to take considerable 
 chances, but it is not safe for even these to let a really eligible man 
 go. As society is now constituted, a young woman after eighteen 
 years of age should not be foolish in holding off from a fair offer in 
 marriage. 
 
 The measure to set for the man is what father will he make for 
 the future children of the union. In this is everything. No good 
 father can be a bad husband, and no bad father can be a good hus- 
 band.. A man to be a good father must have sufl&cient vitality and 
 physique to give promise of life to his children, sufficient force of 
 character to endow them with this quality of success, and sufficient 
 capacity to support the family and to transmit such capacity to the 
 progeny. A man with these qualities in apparent plenty, but who 
 is positively distasteful to the woman, should not be chosen. There 
 will doubtless be some obscure physical or mental apposition unfavor- 
 able to progeny indicated in such case by natural instinct. 
 
 Instinct generally guides us more in matters of the physique or 
 of the emotions than in intellectual or character traits. It is a 
 frank friend who should not be forsworn, at least until the reason 
 has gained a far greater control of life than now. 
 
 At the same time the young woman should not be governed by 
 romantic folly, and expect from the instinct of reproduction what it 
 cannot give. The idea that a man must be loved before he is mar- 
 ried, is good in a sense, but its goodness depends on the definition of 
 love. 
 
 Ivove is a passion that can only be fully possessed after the fruits 
 of union. In its extreme but true sense it has no existence, except 
 as a flower of the reproductive instinct. As flowers differ so does 
 love. It may be like the heavy-odored bloom of the magnolia and 
 the daphne, or like the delicate perfume of the mignonette and violet, 
 or the fragrance of the jessamine, or like the cold splendor of the 
 soulless chrysanthemum, or it may be like an evil-smelling flower. 
 
 In fact the passion of love may be scented from the rose to the 
 stinkweed, but few maids, however much they think so, have' 
 ever had its flower to their noses. Affection may be accompanied 
 by love, or may not. I/)ve, however, cannot exist without affection. 
 In this it differs from lust. Love is the accompaniment of the high- 
 est civilization. Amongst primitive people it is practically un- 
 known. Elsewhere there is some further discussion of this passion. 
 
 lyove is indeed a high development, but its use is not in its abuse. 
 Many young women, brought up in ignorance of life and with ex- 
 travagant notions of the feelings that they ought to experience 
 
Husband Choice. 1 1 1 
 
 toward a man whom they are to marry, lose chances of good hus- 
 bands for whom they have every essential feeling required in the con- 
 tract. More men marry for love than women. The nature of our 
 social arrangements would make this a fact to be as expected as it is 
 necessary. 
 
 The unnecessariness of the present supposedly necessary roman- 
 tic standard set up by some is demonstrated by the very considerable 
 number of matches made on that line that fail in forming a happy 
 home ; whereas the French mariage de convenance averages de- 
 cently in results, and is often better than our so-called love matches. 
 These two extremes are bad. The maid should feel an affection and 
 afl&nity for the man she is to marry ; but she should not expect her- 
 self, or be expected, to feel the passion of love in its full power before 
 she has had experience of what it means. 
 
 It is perfectly true that the instinct of reproduction which draws 
 the sexes together during their period of possible fertility, and some- 
 times abnormally before or after this time, frequently takes a form in 
 which the sexual function has no recognized part. It is most common 
 to see this preliminary passion either in those ignorant of its practical 
 manifestation or, strangely enough, in those passed the capacity of 
 securing the object for which we inherit it — that is, the child. The 
 love follies of the inexperienced youth are only equalled in the impo- 
 tence or sterility of age. 
 
 This unknowing manifestation of the absorbing desire in the 
 healthy for reproduction, a desire normally recognized by the indi- 
 vidual in being driven toward one of the opposite sex capable of 
 carrying out the grand creative act, has in such case its object en- 
 tirely unformulated in the reason. It is in such ignorance that this 
 overmastering instinct in a sound life may mislead us instead of 
 aid us. 
 
 While the pleasures of pre-matrimonial affections and attractions, 
 commonly called love, should not be denied a place in the prelimi- 
 naries of an engagement for a life union, it is unwise and unjust not 
 to notify the inexperienced maid of the true limits of such feeling, 
 and of the control she must maintain over such manifestations for 
 her own safety. A maid, therefore, should resist the supremacy of 
 the passion. Caresses between the sexes lead to the more full awak- 
 ening of the physical passion of reproduction, personal liberties often 
 follow, and these may result in the overthrow of the honor of the 
 maid as fixed not only by the standard of society but by nature 
 itself. 
 
 No man can feel the same regard or respect for a woman, in ad- 
 vanced societies, who allows unlawful liberties, much less for one 
 
112 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 who cedes her virginity except under the solemn compact of mar- 
 riage to secure herself and her children a support and protection. 
 Kven if a man continue and marry after he has been permitted undue 
 liberties, he will not have the same confidence in his mate that he 
 would have had if she had resisted his improper importunities. 
 
 In engagements and before marriage, all manifestations of love 
 should be formal and limited, and a woman should never subject 
 herself to the dangers and temptations of personal liberties, least of 
 all from one in whom her interest has beon matrimonially awakened. 
 
 It is a lover loved who is most dangerous in improper caresses to 
 a maid. If a man, it may be said, lack respect in action toward the 
 woman he intends to make his wife, his idea of marriage must be 
 inferior. 
 
 A young woman should certainly recognize that pre-matrimonial 
 love must be under control and never be allowed full rein. She can- 
 not, for instance, allow herself to fall in love with a man who makes 
 no advances toward her, nor with a man ineligible from physical, 
 mental, or race inferiority. 
 
 To show how much education and surroundings have to do with 
 one's power over the sentiment of love, so foolishly supposed by some 
 to be beyond control, we have only to look at our Southern States 
 and at Brazil. In the first, education has fixed a proper prejudice 
 against the marriage of a white with a negro ; in Brazil no such 
 strong prejudice exists. In the States we see consequently no mixed 
 marriages, while in Brazil they are more the rule than the exception. 
 The white races in these two countries are indeed different, but that 
 it is the educational control which rules their matrimonial choice 
 must be evident from the fact that the Anglo-Saxon man has often 
 satisfied his passions upon the negress, and has, when in foreign 
 lands and liberated from his environment and educational prejudices, 
 married and had children by the woman of nearly every known 
 inferior race. The Anglo-Saxon, has, however, been more conserva- 
 tive in this respect than the I^atin, and his colonies, being generally 
 better bred in not being mixed with inferior native races, are more 
 vigorous and progressive than those of his rivals. 
 
 So also the every-day evidence of the effect of education in keep- 
 ing the classes of society apart in matters of love is an indication of 
 the control our reproductive feelings may and ought to be subjected 
 to. Of course, sometimes we are faultily educated in this respect, 
 and may have a class prejudice that experience has shown to be use- 
 less in securing an improvement in mankind. Such a prejudice is 
 that of the females of the noble families in Europe against marrying 
 one not of their class. The males of the aristocracy have recognized 
 
Husband Choice. 
 
 113 
 
 that their lines of breeding have not made them mentally, morally, 
 or physically superior to many outside their pale, and consequentlj^ 
 whenever circumstances seem favorable, they marry those not of 
 the aristocracy. 
 
 This is also true of nearly all ranks of society. The men do not 
 regard so strictly the often incorrect prejudice that those in other 
 classes are their inferiors, while the women do observe these preju- 
 dices. The men, for adventitious reasons, such as those where 
 fortune can be had, will, in many cases, it is true, prostitute their 
 reproductive powers, and marry women who must produce inferior 
 progeny. This, I believe, is largely because they are ignorant of 
 the true grandeur of reproduction and of children, and of the import- 
 ance of securing a good partner to carry out this main object of life. 
 
 So ignorance among young women, allowing their grand and 
 laudable instinct for love and its fruits an unwarrantable license, 
 leads them to the pinnacles of folly. Thus a young woman may 
 consider that there is but one man in the world for her whom she 
 can truly love. Here is truth and error. It is indeed a fact, that a 
 woman can give her virgin body to but one man ; it is indeed probable 
 that the father of her first child so seals and impresses her that his 
 likeness may again appear even in subsequent children by another ; 
 but it is error that before union and conception any one man is 
 essential to a woman's happiness. This pre-matrimonial love breaks 
 out in the life of nearly every man and woman of our present stand- 
 ing, and receives its direction according to the education, surround- 
 ings, and location of his or her life. 
 
 A New York girl will therefore, by the law of average, marry a 
 New Yorker of her own class. The same girl brought up in San 
 Francisco will be equally likely to marry a Californian, or if her 
 associations of society be with a different class from that to which 
 she was born, she will be likely to marry a man of that class. 
 
 At the age of puberty, Cupid drives the new-bom powers to use 
 in love. It is often prejudice and association that influence love 
 toward, and introduce it to, those eligible for partners in perpetua- 
 ting life. 
 
 The importance, therefore, may be seen of having the education 
 sound and the association of the best, both for man and maid. As 
 the great rewards of life are largely found in cities, so the strongest 
 men tend toward the cities to obtain them. A young woman should 
 therefore spend a certain time in a city or in a place where city people 
 will be met, when of marriageable age. 
 
 Another pinnacle of folly is when the girl, mistaking animal feel- 
 ings or awakened though unformulated desire for sexual union as 
 
1 1 4 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 true and laudable, or at least as irresistible love, cedes to seduction 
 and is ruined, or, upon an inferior basis of looks alone, gives herself 
 in marriage to an inferior man. 
 
 Men have more experience of the world than women, but the very 
 means of this experience introduces them to women of lower classes, 
 and they often wed them, not always wdth bad effects. Women with 
 less opportunity have less knowledge, and the mesalliances, judging 
 by divorce statistics, are more often on the side of the woman. Carroll 
 D. Wright's figures are for the United States, between the years of 
 1867 and 1886, as follows : 
 
 Divorces granted at request of husband 112,639 
 
 "wife . 216,077 
 
 The growth of love with the improvement of man offers us a 
 prospect that in the future, with further improvement, marriage will 
 depend more and more on love — that is, upon the affinity, affection, 
 and respect mutual between the man and woman. When to this are 
 added the true idea of reproduction and the glorious hopes bom of 
 our renewed life in the child, we may expect a wonderful improve- 
 ment in marriage and a love and joy in this relation as yet but 
 dimly perceived amongst the happiest. 
 
 A woman should expect to marry between eighteen and twenty- 
 five. After the latter age her chances rapidly diminish, and, if 
 married, her trouble with the first child will be much greater than 
 before. Her husband should be from five to fifteen years her senior. 
 While these ages and ratios are the best, a woman should stretch a 
 point or two to secure a good husband. With a population that is 
 rapidly becoming redimdant by immigration, and with an increasing 
 standard of life and consequently decreasing and later marriages, a 
 woman is not in a position to take many chances, nor should she be 
 too precipitate nor too liberal in this vital matter. 
 
 A drunkard or hard drinker, or the victim of any dangerous 
 habit, such as that of opium, should not be chosen, mainly on account 
 of the effect on the children. A reform of action, unless prompt, 
 cannot reform the constitution, and the degenerating effect of the in- 
 temperance, in whatever line, must be reflected in the children bom 
 from such a parent. Relapse in action must also be deemed as ex- 
 tremely likely. Intemperance in narcotics or stimulants should 
 always be deemed the result of some previous weakening intemper- 
 ance in work or idleness, or of a constitutional inability to meet the 
 struggles of life on an equality with the average of society. 
 
 In any case it is certain that abuses of whatever kind leave 
 indelible injury on the individual thus erring. We now know, for 
 instance, that alcohol, when abused, leaves permanent lesions in the 
 
Husband Choice. 1 1 5 
 
 liver and the brain and that the power of these organs is diminished. 
 Constitutional disease, such as consumption or syphilis, is equally 
 dangerous and often fatal to the progeny. Such unfortunates should 
 therefore be barred from the choice. The best means of judging of a 
 man's fitness to bring forth children who can maintain the contest 
 of life with success, is the measure of success attained by the man 
 himself. Other things being equal, a woman should always give 
 the preference to the man who has made his mark in the world. 
 
 Fortune in a man is no bar to matrimony, but rather a superior 
 indication. This point, however, must not be misunderstood. 
 Money as a motive in matrimony is meretricious. Its sole value is 
 the indication of the ability and energy of the possessor. 
 
 Upon the deserts of Nubia the lioness has been observed to He 
 and watch a battle between two lions, and, when the contest has been 
 decided, to go quietly away with the victor. So a woman may look 
 out upon her suitors and select him who has achieved victory in 
 whatever line society has set up as most essential for its collective 
 welfare, or in any line she may deem of advantage to her expected 
 children. 
 
 It is easy by observation to ascertain what qualities and condi- 
 tions are best in man for his present condition. But it is difficult, 
 indeed, to appreciate what qualities and conditions are necessary for 
 improvement and for the future. 
 
 In the history of man we see both the physical form and the 
 faculties very different in the extremes of barbarism and of civiliza- 
 tion. The keen, observant eye of the Bedouin is not possessed by 
 our city citizens even when not near-sighted. 
 
 The heavy jaw and full, large, sound teeth of the negro are not 
 possessed by the average American. The latter suffers even in the 
 smallness of his jaw, which crowds his teeth so much that a consider- 
 able number decay or are pulled out to make room for the others. 
 
 The prize-fighter is not the top of our society, nor likely to be. 
 Keen sight and strong jaws might well have appeared to ancient 
 legislators as points essential to be preserved, or even developed, for 
 the safety of the race. We now, looking back, see that they are not. 
 
 The tendency of nature is ever to get rid of the useless. So a 
 man who exercises little soon finds his muscles diminished in size or 
 power, if they have been well developed before. So, also, many of 
 his organs may diminish in activity and the redundant parts tend to 
 atrophy. Some organs may diminish and others not, and disorders 
 ensue on the attempt of nature to set up a new balance. While this 
 is going on many individuals must perish. The difiiculty of trusting 
 to the reason alone, in its present benighted state, for our choice in 
 
1 1 6 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 breeding, must be apparent. The ugliness and, perhaps in part, the 
 infertility of the French are strong arguments against the purely 
 conventional marriage. 
 
 A man at thirty generally shows pretty well the stuff he is made 
 of, and his capacity can be fairly gauged. It is better for men to 
 marry younger than at this age, but better for the girl to be able to 
 choose a man whose character and capacity are formed and knowable. 
 This it is difficult to do before thirty. 
 
 An important reason for choosing a man five or more years her 
 senior is the fact that woman passes out of the reproductive period 
 considerably earlier than man. After the climacteric a woman rapidly 
 loses her sexual feeling and attraction. If a man be in full possession 
 of desire and power, and his wife be without either, we must perceive 
 the dangers that overshadow the union. In America marriages have 
 been largely of persons of nearly similar age. We can consequently 
 explain how it is that in the present decline of the consideration of 
 marriage we find the men most recreant above middle age. 
 
 It is an unpleasant thing to speak of, but then, why play ostrich ? 
 why shut our eyes to patent facts ? 
 
 Prostitutes are supported by boys and married men over forty. 
 It is to be presumed that the wives of these men have lost their 
 power to attract. Another fact in the same line is that, excepting 
 certain classes, as railroad employees, soldiers, sailors, etc., whose 
 lives are peculiarly open to temptation, venereal disease is largely 
 confined to the very young men and to married men over forty. 
 
 It is indeed painful for a pure woman to face these facts of life, 
 but it is better to do so, and then to be armed by knowledge against 
 placing temptation in the husband's way. This may be done by 
 neglect of her person, by refusal of the conjugal duty, and by marry- 
 ing a man of unsuitable age. I cannot recommend a young woman 
 to refuse a good offer of marriage from a man of her own age — but 
 then she ought to know that by and by there must come a severe 
 strain on the husband's fidelity. 
 
 Very young men, certainly before they are twenty-one, should 
 not be chosen. Such a young man cannot use the privileges of a 
 husband with safety to himself. Premature use of the sexual 
 function has a tendency to prevent the full physical and mental 
 development of such as commit this error. 
 
 The progeny bom of immature parents is generally considered as 
 inferior, and as life matures the woman must find herself old while 
 the husband is still young. The inferiority of the progeny is of 
 course limited to those first bom unless the husband's powers be 
 permanently injured. 
 
Husband Choice, 1 1 7 
 
 Writers on these subjects seem to be of one opinion on the in- 
 feriority of children born to the immature. They consider that it is 
 so, but I have seen no conclusive facts adduced to show when man 
 or woman should be considered immature. The first flowers and 
 fi-uits of plants are usually abnormal ; while sometimes superior to 
 the average in size, they are always inferior in texture, flavor, etc., 
 to later fruit produced under equally favorable conditions. Another 
 indication in the same line is the fact that short-lived trees bear 
 sooner than long-lived ones of the same family. An exceedingly 
 unfavorable location may also force a tree to early bearing ; so will 
 sickness, parasitic or predatory attack, so will the pruning of man, 
 and so will budding or grafting. 
 
 Everything injurious or likely to be weakening or fatal to a plant 
 usually produces premature fruiting. Premature fruiting is there- 
 fore a sign of weakness. Some of this is caused designedly by man 
 to secure better fruit. Thus he buds the seedling orange tree to ob- 
 tain the Navel. A superior selling fruit is produced at some expense 
 to the life of the tree. 
 
 A man or woman might not regret shortening his or her life to 
 secure better children, but in this case of the Navel, while the fruit 
 is developed to the taste of man, it has, on the other hand, quite lost 
 its power of sustaining the contest of life. A Navel orange is seed- 
 less and therefore depends for its existence upon the attention of 
 man. 
 
 It is probable that every variety of fruit perpetuated by budding 
 or grafting would either disappear or revert back to the original at 
 the extinction of the lives of the trees in being. Thus an apparent 
 superiority of product at the expense of the parent is shown to be in 
 a true measure fallacious. 
 
 Too young a woman should avoid breeding and avoid too young 
 a mate. This suggests the idea that interest developing at immature 
 age might be met by engagement to marry and postponement till 
 maturer years. 
 
 The general rule should be against this or any engagement until 
 the contracting parties are ready to marry. Eight weeks is the limit 
 to allow for an engagement. The time required for reasonable in- 
 quiry as to the character of the groom is all that is desirable and all 
 that should be allowed. The reasons for this rule are discussed 
 elsewhere. The consideration of a candidate for matrimony through 
 the glass of the future family to be expected must show more clearly 
 than by any other means the essential good points as well as the es- 
 sential bad points of the man as a husband. 
 
 A young girl brought up to look at matrimony as a means to 
 
1 1 8 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 immortality in the progeny, and with a knowledge that her husband 
 must be an equal force in her possible immortal life in the child, can- 
 not, it seems to me, be led into open and apparent aberration of 
 choice. She cannot be so easily deceived. For looking for the 
 essentials of a good father for her future self, the usual means of de- 
 ception — handsome looks, social standing as of a dissolute noble, 
 fashionable dress, or profuse generosity — fade before the grander 
 qualities of fatherhood — vitality of physique, capacity of mind, and 
 force of character. A young maid should attach the greatest import- 
 ance to the choice of a husband. There is but one thing more im- 
 portant, which is the bearing of the child and the renewal of her 
 life. 
 
 In my female as in my male descendants, I will forgive every- 
 thing but sterility and extinction. Thus as a partner of the oppo- 
 site sex is necessary for the continuation of life, a partner must be 
 taken, good if possible, but as nothing can be worse than extinction 
 of the vital spark by which all hope and chance is lost, a partner even 
 though imperfect or below what ought to be desired must be ac- 
 cepted. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 WIFE CHOICE. 
 
 THE first requisite of a woman to be selected for a wife is that 
 she possess the physical capacity to bear children. 
 
 It is, of course, of great importance that the children born 
 should be an improvement on the parents. This subject is worthy 
 of careful study. Amongst the works interesting on this point are 
 those of Darwin, especially that on the changes in animals and 
 plants under domestication, and the works of Francis Galton on 
 heredity, Hutchmson^ s Pedigree of Disease , the works of Maudsley, 
 etc. Galton shows very clearly that capacity, zeal, and vigor, the 
 three qualities which he deems essential for greatness, are enormous- 
 ly more liable to appear in the child of an eminent person than in 
 one of the common average. If both parents be superior, the 
 progeny is certain to be above the average. 
 
 The male brains of the lowest tribes we now know about, and 
 who use the same primitive implements which geology teaches were 
 once the only implements used by early man, vary from thirty-nine 
 to forty-four ounces. In convolutions and structure these brains are 
 inferior to those of our race. 
 
 Whole races of men are much behind the highly civilized peoples 
 in development, especially in that part of the physical development 
 called nerve or brain quality and force. The brain of the Andaman 
 Islander or Bushman of Africa is simpler in convolution and less in 
 weight than that of, say the Anglo-Saxon. The average brain 
 weight of males in the lowest races is in some cases, as has been 
 said, under forty ounces, and the brain presents in its anatomy 
 an appearance similar to that of one of our idiots. The brains of 
 negroes in this country average about forty-four ounces, while the 
 Anglo-Saxon brain averages nearly fifty ounces. 
 
 If an Anglo-Saxon breed to a negress, the lower race traits will 
 appear more or less modified in his children's forms, hair, constitu- 
 tions, and complexions. It is probable that the brain will partake 
 of the lower qualities also. Such a man handicaps himself in his 
 children and diminishes their brain power to an extent that at the 
 
 ' "9 
 
I20 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 very best will take ages to re-acquire, if happily they do not perish 
 before this is achieved in the struggle with stronger competitors. 
 The same point holds good in reference to inferior white races or 
 families of your own race. It is important, therefore, to breed up 
 rather than down. The children of eminent men should be sought 
 in marriage. 
 
 The superiority of the brain of a white American over a negro 
 American is six ounces. The superiority over the brains of other 
 inferior races probably often exceeds ten ounces. Here is a difference 
 in brain capacity which it would take long to overcome under the 
 most favorable circumstances. All men once used no better imple- 
 ments than the lowest savages now do, and all men doubtless in 
 those early times had no better brains than these savages now have. 
 It must have required thousands of years to bring the mind of civilized 
 man to its present superiority, to say nothing of the probable dura- 
 tion of the time of the evolution of mankind itself. 
 
 It is consequently more important to humanity to preserve this 
 improved brain and to continue to improve it than to do anything 
 else. The works of man soon become of themselves useless and 
 antiquated and are of little permanent value. The best brain 
 development can always produce the best of work, and work suited 
 to the time. It is more important, therefore, to transmit a superior 
 brain endowment than to do any work of the brain, and better to 
 sacrifice the work rather than the reproduction of the brain. It is 
 equally clear that, in breeding and reproducing, care should be taken 
 not to adulterate and lower the brain capacity of the children to be 
 expected. 
 
 The importance, therefore, of selecting wisely in marriage and of 
 securing the very best partner possible for the great work of self- 
 perpetuation is manifest. The attention of the more developed 
 men can hardly be too often called to these radical brain differences. 
 
 What careful breeding can do, we see in many animals. In this 
 country, in 1840, the average weight of the fleece of a sheep was 
 1.85 lbs., in 1887 it had risen to 6 lbs. In other countries careful 
 attention has still further increased the yield of wool. In England 
 the Southdowns have been bred for both fleece and meat. The 
 striking superiority of these sheep, especially in the latter case, is to 
 be noted. 
 
 When we consider that the cranial capacity of the European is 
 forty cubic inches greater than that of the native Australian, and that 
 this is four times greater than the difference between the cranial 
 capacity of the Australian and the gorilla, the importance of careful 
 selection in breeding may be understood. As the brains of our 
 
Wife Choice, 121 
 
 babies resemble in their convolutions and comparative simplicity, 
 first those of the quadrumana and then those of the savage, we may- 
 surmise that we have risen from this low estate and may reasonably 
 expect that evolution and improvement are still at work to carry some 
 of us through our children to heights impossible for us now to con- 
 ceive. 
 
 While these dififerences are striking enough, there is good cause 
 to believe that in the leading clans of humanity the difiertfnce is still 
 greater. The average of American brains of the white race is said to 
 be short of 50 ounces. But this average is taken from a comparatively 
 low stratum and the ruling class doubtless averages much more. Such 
 brains when occasionally weighed, as was that of Daniel Webster, 
 show an extraordinary excess of power running up even to over 60 
 ounces. Without the brain with strength to support the strain now 
 necessarily forced on it, we can hope for nothing. In California, 
 one third of the population is of foreign birth ; this third furnishes 
 two thirds of our insane. It is thus indicated that the minds of this 
 foreign one third are not on the average as capable of sustaining the 
 strain of our general progress as are the minds of the native Ameri- 
 cans, who have made it. As the negro and the white do not com- 
 bine to make a strong race nor in all probability one that will per- 
 petuate itself, so we may expect that other differences of less extent 
 between the whites themselves will also be incapable of furnishing a 
 resistant and progressive breed. (There seem at this time no con- 
 clusive indications that the negro will not be able in certain climatic 
 belts in America to hold his own or even to supplant the white. Of 
 this, however, it is too soon to speak with certainty. ) 
 
 In attempting to breed up, the greatest care must be taken not to 
 miss the true line of progress. We cannot now say what the sum 
 of qualities is that is best for our future improvement. We can see 
 the elephant stirpass us in physical power and longevity, and the 
 horse in swiftness, the bird possessed of the capacity of flight 
 through the air, the fish with capacity to live in the water, and the 
 lizard to live for long periods without any water. All these have 
 powers we entirely lack. The tiger surpasses us in ferocity and natural 
 weapons, as does the wasp. So also amongst men, we see the aver- 
 age male Zulu surpass our average in physical proportion and 
 strength, and many savages are our superiors in the power of sight 
 and of reading the open book of nature. 
 
 Thrown on our natural resources in deserts like those of the 
 Sahara, of Australia, or of the Colorado, we should be at a disad- 
 vantage compared to the natives of these districts, and would prob- 
 ably perish where they grow fat. So in brain development, we, as 
 
122 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 a people, are perhaps below the populations of the old Greek cities, 
 or of the Italian republics, and we may thus see that intellect, while 
 evidently in the main line of superiority and progress, demands for 
 its perpetuation both a physical power to reproduce and the moral 
 qualities leading to its exercise. Otherwise the superior brain power, 
 like that of the Greeks, must disappear as theirs did. Another thing 
 to recollect is, that qualities and conditions favorable in a high 
 degree to the present activities of man may be the very ones that will 
 absorb his energy and prevent him from following the true but 
 unseen line of progress in the future. Thus we may explain the 
 rise of dijBferent branches of our race and their fall and extinction. 
 Their development was not even and true. By premature excess in 
 what will be eventually essential, or in fatal lack of necessary quali- 
 ties for progress, or in the development of deadly errors, civilization 
 after civilization has fallen. 
 
 Marriage without children is nominal not real. In fact, a sterile 
 marriage is no marriage so far as the fundamental object of marriage 
 is concerned. The physical capacity to perform the duties of wife 
 is, therefore, an absolute essential in a woman for your life partner. 
 Any condition of chronic disease, or any malformation that w^ould 
 throw doubt upon this capacity in a woman, should at once strike 
 her from the list of your possible choice. Uterine diseases in woman 
 should be a bar by reason of the tendency, in woman so diseased, to 
 sterility. The woman with broad pelvis and rounded breast will 
 generally prove a mother when made a wife. The attractive and 
 well developed girl must be at least handsome as a whole, for the 
 standard of beauty in women is really based on their physical fitness 
 to become mothers. A woman not capable of being a mother, can- 
 not be a beautiful woman. The perfection of charms, as in the 
 Venus of Milo, is, also, from a physiological point of view, the per- 
 fection of physical capacity to perform the duties of a mother. A 
 woman anatomically correct, but with a face unusually ugly, should 
 in most cases be avoided. The reason of this is, that these traits 
 may be transmitted to your daughters, making their marriage diffi- 
 cult and thus interfering with their future happiness. 
 
 Women, on the other hand, wdth extraordinary beauty of face, 
 skin, etc. , unfortunately, as a rule, attach imdue importance to such 
 qualities. They notice the effect of their striking beauty in the 
 passing crowd, in society, and amongst acquaintances, but ignore 
 altogether the fact that those they live with forget about their skin- 
 deep beaut3^ It requires but a short intimacy in famil}^ life to sink 
 the beauty of the face, and substitute, for all purposes of attraction 
 or happiness, the beauty of heart and mind. Thus beautiful women 
 
Wife Choice. 123 
 
 in society, who have flirted and tasted the delights of adoration in 
 the acquaintance and in the crowd without effort, are apt indeed to 
 consider themselves ill-treated or neglected when the family life a 
 wife must lead gives facial beauty so poor a place. 
 
 In every-day intercourse, one's likes and dislikes are based on 
 action, not on looks. Society belles forget, if they ever knew, this 
 fact, and expect devotion and attention from the husband, propor- 
 tioned to that received from flattering beaux, all based on looks and 
 rattle talk. The husband forgets the looks, finds nothing else, and, 
 disappointed, becomes dull and indifferent. The passing swell 
 attracted by the beauty is all devotion. The wife contrasts the 
 two, knows not the cause, feels injtired, then come bickerings and 
 unhappiness, if not divorce. 
 
 Next to the physical quality is the moral quality. A wife should 
 possess an unalterable devotion to virtue so as to give the husband 
 complete security in the paternity of his children. Without the 
 reproductive power, sexual virtue has no cause to exist. 
 
 The human being is greatly governed by circumstances. Those 
 who are good might, under different conditions, be bad. Those who 
 are bad might, tmder a more favorable fate, be good. What is sun- 
 shine may become shadow, what is shadow may become sunshine. 
 All depends on the situation of the sun or of the clouds. 
 
 Therefore, in selecting a wife, her training and surroundings 
 should be considered, for these will without doubt have played an 
 important part in the formation of her character. The woman for a 
 wife should be a virgin. This bars widows. Widows have been in 
 the arms and embrace of another. No thorough man can altogether 
 forgive this. He can never have the same regard or devotion for a 
 woman deflowered by another, as for a woman all his own. He may 
 not think of this in the intoxication of passion before marriage, but 
 it will inevitably occur to him afterwards. The thought is an un- 
 pleasant one, and the truer the man the more he will feel it. The 
 woman who has been wived can never have the same modesty, or 
 the same true devotion, to a second husband that she might have had 
 to a first, or that a complete marriage relation demands. The fine- 
 ness of woman's nature is spoiled by promiscuous intercourse even to 
 the extent of two men. She is like an apple ; an apple mouthed and 
 tasted by one may still be mouthed and eaten to the core with undi- 
 minished pleasure by him who first did bite, but to all others there 
 is a rebelling thought, often inexplicable and ill-defined, that prompts 
 them not to touch. An apple partly eaten, with the tooth-marks of 
 another mouth, left in a public place, would be touched only by those 
 in the pangs of hunger. The better the person, the less likely to eat. 
 
124 ^^^^ Conquest of Death. 
 
 The simile fails in this that in such an apple some parts may remain 
 untouched ; not so a deflowered woman, every part and portion to 
 her inmost life has been chewed and slobbered with. 
 
 Those who have not thought on woman's and on man's nature, 
 and upon the grandeur and unity of marriage, failing to appreciate 
 these points, may marry widows, but they cannot escape the conse- 
 quences. Such a marriage must be incomplete. There are other 
 reasons why widows should not be married. A woman barren, or in 
 any way defective as to her reproductive organs, should not be 
 chosen for a wife ; therefore, a widow who has borne no children to 
 her first or to any former husband should be avoided, as likely to 
 remain barren. On the other hand, a woman who has conceived by 
 a divorced or a dead husband, or by any one, has received his stamp 
 or seal indelibly by that fact. It is a matter of common observation 
 that old mothers resemble and suggest the likeness of their husbands, 
 and that the likeness to the father tends to be most marked in the 
 last children bom. The cause of this is apparent when we study 
 foetal life. The egg bursts at the menstrual periods from the ovary 
 of the female ; if the spermatozoa of the man find it, it will be vital- 
 ized and more or less stamped by the man. So the child is a part of 
 the woman and a part of the man, and always contains a strong ele- 
 ment of both. A child may entirely resemble its father and still have 
 a child like the mother, or the likeness may come out after several 
 generations, and vice versa. Thus the child in utero is the man as 
 well as the woman. When the egg is fecundated and becomes attached 
 to the uterus the man-father is actually in the woman attached to 
 her. The connection is complete. By the chorion and the placenta 
 the blood of the mother enters the child, nourishes it, and passes 
 back to the mother. The circulation is one. Thus is the blood of 
 the man for nine months passing in and out of the woman. She 
 is stamped by the man's vitality in the process, and after a while she 
 may resemble him. 
 
 But what is most important in this connection is that children 
 by a second husband may resemble more or less the first. What a 
 painful reminder of former caresses by another, such a child must 
 be. The first husband is revenged, and brands the progeny of the 
 second. See Lessons in Gynecology by Dr. Wm. Goodell, page 376. 
 I have noted a number of instances of these resemblances myself. 
 Recently I became acquainted with a family in which the mother 
 had borne two children by a first husband and four by the second. 
 The first three children by the second marriage resembled the first 
 father, and were especially like the daughter by the first husband. 
 The case was the more clear from the fact that the first husband was 
 
Wife Choice, 125 
 
 of Latin extraction, had brown eyes, a peculiarly fine complexion, 
 and crinkly hair, while the mother and second husband were Anglo- 
 Saxons, of light complexion and blue or gray eyes and not curly 
 hair. The first three children of the second husband had brown eyes, 
 crinkly hair, and the complexion of the first husband. The second 
 husband and wife remembered no ancestors of this type, but their 
 family knowledge did not extend far enough to eliminate this source 
 of error. 
 
 I am bound to admit that this stamping by the first sire is not 
 proven. Most of the breeders of animals whom I have consulted 
 have failed to notice such stamping, and at least one conscientious 
 student, A. Weismann, in The Germ-Plasma, denies it. 
 
 One of the rules of Moses made it the duty of a man to marry the 
 widow of a deceased brother and raise seed to him. The sect of the 
 Sadducees held such a marriage by a brother to be an important 
 religious duty. 
 
 In thinking on this rule and reflecting on the frequently repeated 
 admonitions to go forth and replenish the earth, on the fact that the 
 old Hebrew blessings were so often for the fertility and continuance 
 in children of the life of the individual and that the curses were for 
 sterility and extermination, it has seemed to me that the great 
 importance attached by the Jewish prophets to child-bearing took 
 this now forgotten form to secure real children to a dead man from a 
 wife already stamped to him. It must be confessed that a careful 
 study of institutions gives fair presumption for a different origin 
 of this rule. 
 
 It is doubtless a rule that a first fertilization stamps more or less 
 the mother, but it must also be said that the first husband, though 
 present, may not be visible in the children of the second. The stamp 
 may come out in the grandchildren when not visible in the child, 
 but of this I have no recorded observations. See Darwin, Anhnals 
 and Plants under Domestication, vol. i., chap, xi ; Prosper Lucase, 
 Traits de V HerSditi Naturelle, vol. ii., chap, xi., page 64 ; Dalton's 
 Huniari Physiology, chap, xi., page 659, 7th edition; also Flint's 
 Physiology, chapter on Reproduction. 
 
 The treatise of Foumier on Syphilis and Marriage touches on a 
 point which confirms the view that the mother is influenced by the 
 foetus. Syphilis manifests its first presence by contagion in the 
 chancre and bubo. The only two exceptions to this are hereditary 
 S3rphilis and the syphilis of conception. The syphilis of conception, 
 according to Fournier, is that syphilis found only in women preg- 
 nant or who may have been recently pregnant, whose husbands had 
 no infective sores, and who themselves had neither chancre nor bubo 
 
126 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 in the course of the disease, but whose husbands had had these 
 symptoms of syphilis. The children born to women thus affected 
 always have syphilis. It is well known that a mother contracting 
 syphilis may infect the child in utero, but it is not so well known 
 that the child in utero inheriting sypMlis from the father may infect 
 the mother. Fournier is very positive that this form of infection 
 occurs, and states that the number of cases observed is so great that 
 all source of error is eliminated in the history of the contagion. The 
 father is free from infectious sores, but has syphilis in his blood. He 
 impregnates the wife and the child inherits the constitutional taint 
 which is present in utero. The mother without any of the S3"mptoms 
 of contagion, universal in the history of syphilis, manifests the 
 secondary symptoms as a constitutional taint. It is the constitution of 
 the child in utero which has stamped her constitution. Without any 
 contagion from the father she receives his dread disease from the child 
 constitutionally. The child when bom, if alive, manifests its syphilis 
 in the same way by a general order and not by any chancre or bubo. 
 
 A number of cases are now on record in which a healthy woman 
 having borne a syphilitic child to a syphilitic father, and without 
 herself contracting the disease, afterward bore a syphilitic child to a 
 healthy man. Two of these cases were very carefully checked to 
 exclude error and are fairly reliable. From the South come a number 
 of cases reported by medical men, of white or mulatto children borne 
 by negro women to negro husbands, the women having borne children 
 previously to a white man. 
 
 Thus one can perceive how influential is the child before birth on 
 the mother, and consequently how important a part a man plays in 
 stamping for good or for evil his wife. The same fact in regard to 
 resemblances is known amongst breeders of the domestic animals, 
 and they will not breed a mare to a scrub sire for fear that his stamp 
 will again appear in the progeny of better animals. The case of the 
 Arabian mare first covered by a quagga, whose subsequent colts, 
 though by well bred stallions, still showed the markings of the 
 quagga, is a classic instance. It is said by some breeders that a 
 mare put for the first time to a jack will show mule characteristics 
 in all future colts though sired by horses. The importance of good 
 breeding in horses, which we can appreciate when we recall the fact 
 that the great horse King Herod won ^201,505 sterling in prizes 
 and begot 497 winners, and that Eclipse begot 334 winners, has 
 made breeders carefiil, not of their stallions that can receive no 
 impress, but of the mares, whose breeding powers may be and 
 probably often are ruined by impregnation from inferior sires, and 
 the consequent stamping and sealing to his life they thus received. 
 
Wife Choice, 127 
 
 The plant louse is impregnated for forty generations (Bonnet) ; 
 the caterpillar for three or four (Bernouilli) ; the bee for a year 
 (Riaumur) ; the hen for her whole brood. We may therefore 
 understand the importance of a first fertilization. 
 
 Edward Home, in writing about horse-breeding, relates the story 
 of an Arabian mare first impregnated by an ass, whose colts ever after, 
 though by the finest stallions, resembled the ass. Magne speaks of 
 the understanding of this matter by the breeders in Poitou, and the 
 precautions taken to guard against improper impregnation. The 
 bitch is the same ; the first dog impresses her more than twenty that 
 may follow ; he marks their offspring with a resemblance to himself 
 (Stark, Burdach). The domestic sow surprised by the wild boar re- 
 tains his fierceness and bears to his peaceable successors bristling 
 pigs (Meckel, Michelet). 
 
 This law which plainly devotes the female to her first love, and 
 protests against those which follow, appears to be universal amongst 
 the superior animals. Similar conditions are also noticed in the 
 vegetable world. I have noticed the curious fact that buds used in 
 budding fruit trees varied in their fruit, even when originally coming 
 from the same tree. This may be accounted for by supposing that 
 the fertilization of the blossom impressed, to a certain extent, the 
 wood growth near it. So different parts of the tree being differently 
 fertilized in the blossom, might be permanently affected in character. 
 Thus the male element would not only stamp the character of the 
 fruit, but also, though to a less extent, the fruit twig or branch, 
 leaving an impress that would show on fruit differently fertilized, 
 and on buds or cuttings made from the branch. 
 
 In the orchidacese the pollen is perfected and disappears before 
 the ovules can be directly fertilized by it. We must in this case 
 presume that the mother plant is fertilized and produces the ovule 
 afterward. This is suggestive of the fertilization of certain insects 
 for succeeding generations by one covering. John Brown, M.D., 
 has made some interesting observations on the cross-fertilization of 
 peas. In his cases not only was the seed affected, but the pod also, 
 showing the reflex on the female element. 
 
 You will thus perceive that the first impregnation is a brand upon 
 the woman and upon her future children, no matter by whom sired. 
 
 As the certainty of paternity is the main basis of marriage, so the 
 marrying of women, mothers by other men, is in opposition to its 
 fundamental principle, in that they will really bear children to 
 the first husband, though the life flame of the child is kindled by the 
 second. 
 
 Another point in this connection which deserves study is the 
 
128 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 comparative frequency of the procreation of the great bj- men from 
 second or plural wives, and the rarity of such procreation of the great 
 by women from second or plural husbands (as in prostitution or 
 polyandry). Joseph Jefferson and Cromwell are the only exceptions 
 thus far noted. If, on examination, it turns out that there is a 
 marked weakness on the part of women to transmit superiorities 
 from second husbands, there will be an additional force to the 
 recommendation not to marry widows. 
 
 I do not advise widows or divorced women to remain single. If 
 they can find a man ready to take them, they themselves have no 
 dominating reason against accepting a second marriage. For a man, 
 however, the question, as has been explained, is entirely of a differ- 
 ent aspect. Nearly every great religious legislator has formulated 
 rules discouraging to the marrying of widows. These barbarous 
 rules included the burning of women after their husbands' death, as 
 in the suttee of India ; the killing and burying of women to accom- 
 pany their husbands, as in Fiji ; and their seclusion from general 
 life more or less complete. 
 
 Such women as have lost their maidenhood out of matrimony are 
 still more impossible, for the thought is inevitable that the virtue 
 they have failed to protect once they may fail to protect again. In 
 fact, it does not exist to protect. 
 
 The widow's former husband has at least the merit of being dead. 
 The divorced woman's ex-husband may be alive to recall himself and 
 his privileges to his successor. A wife who cannot keep, or will not be 
 kept by, her husband, may well be mistrusted as a life partner. She 
 is considered as dealt with, and condemned as a woman to take to 
 wife in the words spoken of widows. But lest there be misapprehen- 
 sion, the rule is laid down, *'Thou shalt not marry a divorced 
 woman. ' ' 
 
 The Jews owe much of their success in maintaining their race to 
 the laws of Moses. One of these in relation to the marriage of 
 priests in the 21st chapter of Leviticus, verses 13 and 14, is as follows. 
 
 13. " And he shall take a wife in her virginity." 
 
 14. ** A widow or a divorced woman, or profane or an harlot, these shall 
 he not take ; but take a virgin of his own people to wife." 
 
 It may be safely presumed that the promise of a Messiah to be 
 borne by some Jewish woman has done much to encourage childbirth 
 and consequently family life in this race. 
 
 Many orthodox Hebrew wives for ages have had the secret and 
 exalted hope that some one of them might be glorified in bearing a 
 Saviour for her race. As long as this belief held complete sway in 
 
Wife Choice, 129 
 
 a Jewish woman's mind, no worldly digression from the great work 
 of reproduction could attract her. Perhaps it is on this account that 
 Jewish wives have become proverbial for fidelity and for their atten- 
 tion to home duties, for these are incidents and characteristics of 
 fertility in women. 
 
 In recent times with the weakening of persecution and the ad- 
 vance of science, the Hebrew race has not the ancient fulness of 
 belief in the communion of God and Moses, and the Jews now often 
 slight and disregard the wise rules of the founder of their historic 
 life. This change is making rapid way. 
 
 A few years past a Hebrew prostitute was a curiosity, in America 
 at least ; now such misguided and irretrievably ruined Jewesses are 
 to be found in every large city. 
 
 The Jewish yotmg men are said upon good authority to be often 
 more wanton and lustful than their other fellow sinners of different 
 race. These signs show a weakening of the old rules that have 
 preserved the Hebrew race intact for so many ages. 
 
 The unbridled sensuality of the males of a race or nation has 
 always preceded the prostitution of their females. Such license of 
 the males, at first practised on captives or inferiors, has in the end 
 drawn their own wives and daughters into the vortex of dishonor, 
 and has surely diminished the desire for child-bearing amongst 
 women. So less children are born and the grandeur of the repro- 
 ductive instinct is debased to the level of low lust. 
 
 Man cannot long worship in the temples of Cyprus without find- 
 ing in his own family women the tastes of the Cyprian. 
 
 With Corruption, Without Children — Such is the result to be 
 anticipated within a short period, if the morals of man be loose. The 
 first signs of a decay amongst the Jews are plainly in view. -Their 
 women no longer expect a Messiah. 
 
 The rules of many of the foremost of the ancient peoples are now 
 known to have been exceedingly strict in regard to both marriage 
 and family life. A Roman of the senatorial rank could not marry 
 any inferior woman. Their definition of an inferior woman was 
 doubtless defective, and included all women of other races no matter 
 how exalted. Thus Antony could not marry Cleopatra, Queen of 
 Egypt, and was obliged to live with her as his mistress and not as 
 his wife. Caesar was in the same situation, and his son by her was 
 illegitimate. The story of Titus and Berenice is another illustration 
 of the rule. This Berenice was a granddaughter of Herod the Great 
 of Judea. She was three times married : first very young to Marcus, 
 son of Alexander the Alabarch ; second, to her uncle Herod, King 
 of Chalcis, who left her a widow at twenty ; and the third time, to 
 
130 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 Polemon, King of Cilicia, whom she deserted. After the capture of 
 Jerusalem, Titus fell in love with her and would have married her 
 had it not been for the Roman rule, which was strongly enforced by 
 the prejudices of the people. Racine has written a tragedy founded 
 on this story. 
 
 Every wife should have a good moral character, the principal 
 element of which should be virtue. After physique and morals comes 
 intellectual capacity. 
 
 A man marrying should try to improve his blood and life. The 
 children being himself renewed, he should look for their mother not 
 only where physique is sound but where the mind is strong also. 
 He should not choose one who, through imperfect information or 
 abortion of maternal instinct, seeks a career inconsistent with child- 
 bearing, for such tendencies are exterminating and fatal, but he 
 should look for a healthy, well-developed brain. 
 
 These three are the main points in selecting a wife — Physique, 
 Virtue, Intellect. The secondary considerations are the social and 
 property standing of the woman and her age. A woman in good 
 social position, when the tone of society is healthy, must have ob- 
 served the many unwritten laws that govern it. These laws are in 
 the line of good breeding and virtue, and while somewhat considered 
 in all classes, they are only fully known amongst the best and cau 
 therefore only be completely observed in that stratum. 
 
 A young woman in full standing in society ought to have good 
 breeding, at least in outward semblance. Every endeavor should 
 be made to have the good breeding real as well as seeming. This 
 gives a stamp to the household and to the children, and will tend to 
 good manners. Good breeding acquired in infancy will be of great 
 advantage to the mature life of the progeny thus influenced. The 
 foundation of good breeding is the heart. Never forget this. Culti- 
 vate good feeling and action in harmony with it and you have good 
 manners. 
 
 A young woman in good social position is there presumably 
 through the forceful actions of her ancestors, and is therefore likely 
 to inherit such qualities, and consequently to transmit them to your 
 children. On the other hand, it must be remembered that the re- 
 moval of the necessity of productive work which success brings,, 
 causes a cessation of such work in almost all cases. The qualities that 
 brought success, no longer used, retrograde and eventually disappear. 
 
 Thus men rise, transmit their powers to their children (them- 
 selves renewed). These, lacking the motive and necessity, neglect 
 to use the inherited powers, which consequently fail, and in a gene- 
 ration or two sink often below the general average. 
 
Wife Choice, 131 
 
 The fish in the Mammoth Cave have no use for eyes. The non- 
 use of the eyes has produced a loss of function, and we find now in 
 these fish only rudimentary eyes which see nothing. Rudimentary 
 organs abound everywhere in animal life, not excepting humanity. 
 Such organs have come to this condition through non-use. 
 
 The appendix vermiformis, a part of man's intestine, is now not 
 only useless, but occasionally causes trouble and even death. Its 
 function in the marsupials, where it is large and developed, is to 
 digest crude vegetable food. Man no longer eats such food, and 
 consequently has no use for this part of the intestines. Non-use has 
 destroyed it. 
 
 A man who breaks his arm has to wear it in a sling after it is set, 
 until the bone knits again. In the meantime no use of it is possible. 
 In every such case a progressive atrophy of the muscles will be 
 noticed, and the power of the arm will be much less when the arm 
 is taken from the sling than when it was put in ; frequently the old 
 power is never regained. 
 
 So special capacity is bom in families, dwindles through non-use, 
 and disappears. Life runs in a circle in which no man or family has 
 been able to gain permanent ascendancy. Some, ay, whole tribes 
 are trampled out of existence and exterminated, but the advance of 
 man is by average of the whole and leavening of all. Each rise is 
 higher, each fall less deep ; so while no family knows thus far a 
 permanent conquest of all other families, society at large advances, 
 destroying only the sterile who destroy themselves, and leaving 
 stranded and stationary some few far off stragglers too weak to make 
 the fight of life and progress. Two principles are here in conflict : 
 inheritance of property, which gives the impulse to those great 
 works enjoyable in our own life, projected to the future in our chil- 
 dren. This gives motive for great work. 
 
 The other principle is this : capacity of body and of brain depends 
 on use. Use in the long run depends on compulsion. Work is the 
 child of necessity. But to work for yourself living in the child, 
 grandchild, and descendant demands inheritance. Inheritance of 
 property involves a diminution of the necessity for productive labor 
 in the inheritor. The labor must be expected to decrease as the 
 necessity for it is removed. With diminished work is diminished 
 use of faculty. As the faculties are unused they cease to grow, then 
 decay. 
 
 Thus the family that rises by capacity to wealth and power, with 
 inheritance rises no more, for it works less ; working principally from 
 habit, necessity being absent, losing soon the habit, work ceases. 
 The capacity, at first rusty, is now rotten, and the family sinks back 
 
132 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 to obscurity, if it happily does not disappear, exterminated by the 
 children of idleness, vice, and disease. 
 
 The grandest motive for the greatest work is the effect of such 
 work in shaping the human life toward improvement, an improve- 
 ment that will tend to be repeated in the worker's children. If his 
 children can be moulded to improvement by great thoughts and 
 grand acts, a man has an unquenchable motive for the best use of all 
 his faculties. A woman equally. 
 
 Weismann, indeed, denies such influence. His experiment on 
 five generations of white mice, 901 individuals, when he cut the tails 
 off without any sign of tail disappearance showing in the young, is 
 striking. The Jews, too, are an illustration, for they have circum- 
 cised for ages without any congenital loss of the foreskin. It appears 
 from this that some mutilations are not inheritable. On the other 
 hand, numerous investigations of nerve mutilation show such to be 
 certainly transmitted. Brown-Sequard has published some recent 
 experiments in this line. Nerve diseases, as insanity, epilepsy, 
 ataxia, chorea, show a strong tendency to hereditary transmission. 
 Pfitgun finds the two end joints of the little toe are becoming fused, 
 41.5 per cent, in women, and 31 per cent, in men. The musculus 
 stemalis, a new muscle or useful reversion to a very old one, is of 
 advantage in the recently acquired costal breathing • of women, and 
 is most often found in that sex. Dr. A. I^ane has demonstrated not 
 only modifications of structure in shoemakers and tailors, but also 
 the creation of new structures of use in their special occupation. 
 There is a tendency to inherit these peculiar adaptations, for several 
 cases of children of shoemakers of two generations show the new 
 type before going to work. A thousand such details would prove 
 nothing. But the weight of testimony and a reasonable interpreta- 
 tion of the changes we note in animals make it probable that these 
 changes have arisen largely through use of function, and the con- 
 sequent progressive adaptation of the form of life to the function 
 necessary for its maintenance and transmission. 
 
 Perhaps nothing we now know could lend more strength to this 
 view than the German figures showing 65 per cent, of all cases of 
 near-sightedness to be hereditary. Myopia is primarily due to a 
 changed function and strain on the eye. It would not seem possible 
 that the eye could be the only organ affected in descendants by a 
 change of function. 
 
 Carrying out these rules and thus keeping sound on the question 
 of reproduction and so escaping extermination, it may be for you to 
 reconcile these two principles. When you solve the problem, the 
 earth is yours. 
 
Wife Choice. 133 
 
 Zeal, that quality which drives to effort, whether it be recom- 
 pensed or not, whether it be necessary or not, is almost always found 
 in the great. Zeal may then be our road out of this dilemma. It is 
 indeed a quality we should seek in breeding. Therefore, while 
 capacity, force, vitality, and intellect should first be sought in the 
 children of the successful, the other considerations mentioned will 
 make it often best to seek a wife amongst those rising and conse- 
 quently developing their faculties, rather than amongst those risen 
 and leaving their capacities in disuse to be eaten to the heart by rust, 
 and therefore going backward or into extermination. 
 
 There is, however, another cause for the return to the general 
 standard of the children of those above it that has been demonstrated 
 by Galton in his Natural Inheritance, This is the law of Regression. 
 He shows that in every society there is a certain average as to various 
 characteristics, which we may presume to be the best suited to the 
 conditions in which the society lives. Any variation from this 
 standard has a constant and calculatable tendency to revert to the 
 standard. His demonstrations are in inherited heights and inherited 
 color of the eyes. In height he transmutes the female to the male, 
 on the basis of the female height bearing the ratio to that of the male 
 of 100 to 108, which a great mass of measurements shows to be 
 substantially correct. He then strikes an average between the 
 height of the father and of the mother transmuted, which he calls the 
 mid-parent height. If the height of the mid-parent be above or 
 below the standard of the society examined, there is a constant 
 tendency in the children to regression to that standard. The 
 average of these will be one third less removed from the standard of 
 the society than was that of the parents. Thus the parents transmit 
 two thirds of their united and average variation. 
 
 The coloring of the eyes follows the same rule, and so also does 
 that of artistic temperament. We may presume that the law holds 
 good in all human qualities, and thus is partly explained the facts 
 of observation, that the children of eminent parents are not so 
 talented or so much above the average as were the parents, and 
 consequently there is another levelling law at work besides the 
 atrophy and disappearance of organs or qualities that are not 
 used. 
 
 Galton further shows that some inherited qualities from father 
 and mother are blended in the child ; one such is height : while on 
 the other hand, some are not likely to be blended but tend to be 
 inherited in their entirety from one or the other parent ; one such is 
 the color of the eyes. The child of a blue-eyed mother and of a 
 black-eyed father is likely to have either blue eyes or black eyes, 
 
1 34 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 thus inheriting the color altogether from the father or altogether 
 from the mother or perhaps from some ancestor. 
 
 The height of the child, however, may be the exact average of 
 the two parents. Other qualities or characteristics doubtless follow 
 the same opposition. Other curious matters are brought out in 
 Gal ton's investigations which show another and different law to be 
 at work in the opposite direction. 
 
 A peculiarity in a man involves the expectation of finding one 
 third of that peculiarity in his mid-parent. The amount of influence 
 in inheritance of the mid-parent pure and simple on the progeny is 
 figured to be close to one half, of each separate parent therefore one 
 quarter, of the mid-grandparent one quarter, and of each grand- 
 parent one sixteenth ; that is to say, the average of a family of six or 
 more will follow this rule, and upon the average every person owes 
 one half his qualities and characteristics directly to his parents, 
 and the other half to remote influences of ancestors working through 
 the parents. 
 
 Galton also explains by his examinations that a peculiar or 
 eminent person is more likely to arise from the great mass of average 
 people than from the few above the average, although each one of the 
 few above the average has a vastly greater chance of producing an 
 eminent person than any one of the common average. He uses the 
 following language to prevent any one from placing too little 
 importance on inheritance. 
 
 "The other subject to be alluded to is the fundamental distinction that may 
 exist between two couples whose personal faculties are naturally alike. If one 
 of the couples consist of two gifted members of a poor stock and the other of 
 two ordinary members of a gifted stock, the difference between them will 
 betray itself in their offspring. The children of the former will tend to regress, 
 those of the latter will not. The value of a good stock to the well-being of 
 future generations is therefore obvious." 
 
 When the first primitive life appeared in the world, it may be 
 presumed that the conditions were suitable only to the most primitive 
 forms; all deviations toward higher forms must then have been 
 exterminating and the law of regression must have had full sway. 
 As the conditions improved, the law of adaptation to surroundings 
 doubtless added its force to the law of variation and so the two over- 
 came the law of regression. Thus each new condition encouraged 
 and developed a life suited to it. 
 
 The various fields of life once occupied, any variation from the 
 standard of those occupying one field to that of those in another must 
 be fatal, for any adaptation would in its various transitory stages be 
 met by a body of beings whose standard was already perfectly suited 
 
Wife Choice. 135 
 
 to the conditions of life in question. This handicap would be too 
 ^reat to be overcome. 
 
 We can thus understand the unchanging character of present 
 orders and species of life, and must expect it to continue except as to 
 the ending of lower forms of life in occasional extermination through 
 unsuitable surroundings supervening, and in the highest form, man, 
 in progress adapting him to advances made possible through natural 
 changes of condition either direct or caused by man himself. In 
 such progress man has no superior type to compass his defeat. 
 
 In evolution, therefore, it is to be presumed that change in lile 
 characteristics can only come where changed conditions offer the 
 chance. Changes causing extermination have already come, ending 
 forever many forms of life. These or other changes have, however, 
 continued to occur, which have made openings for new improvements 
 of life at the top, and have even caused reversions of high forms to 
 suit low opportunities. These changes are now going on. Some are 
 natural and slow beyond appreciation, such as the cooling of the 
 earth, and some are caused by man and make new conditions to 
 which he must adapt himself. 
 
 Steam and electricity have made life more rapid and more trying. 
 "Thus a being with greater nerve power than the average of past 
 civilized man is best suited to our present conditions. We see this 
 plainly in the proportionately more rapid increase of insane, idiots, 
 suicides, inebriates, etc. , than the increase of the population, would 
 warrant. Consequently, the conditions of life must be more 
 severe on the nerves than they were. The conditions of life are 
 changing. This is a matter which requires constant attention on the 
 part of the family founder, and it makes an acquaintance at least 
 with the excitements and trials of city life an essential to the develop- 
 ment of nerve power to keep one in the current of progress. (See 
 Chapter v., ''The Child.") 
 
 We can perceive also from these considerations the necessity of 
 the cultivation of the feelings of humanity. We must have a society 
 suited to our growth. A selfish individualism alone is not enough. 
 A sound family is not enough. 
 
 Progress demands a favorable environment, which the individual 
 cannot create. Conditions compatible with a higher evolution must 
 be the outcome of a social organization and must be supported by it. 
 Narrow selfishness, then, may as well be discarded at once and for 
 ever. It is a no-thoroughfare. A general and intelligent humanity 
 in action is a necessity for progress. It is a hopeful symptom to note 
 the gradual growth and spread through the ages of a humanitarian 
 sympathy. 
 
136 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 We must not be extreme in this, certainly not to the extent of the 
 danger of self-extermination in sterility. In such aberration, the 
 individual would lose himself and the true objects of humani- 
 tarianism. 
 
 Eminence in goodness or ability, as in the Ancian family of Rome, 
 eminence in badness or incapacity, as in the Juke family of New 
 York, are often long-continued in families, and, by proper breeding, 
 the good could be as certainly maintained and improved as are the 
 qualities of animals. 
 
 Great attention has been devoted by man to the development of 
 certain qualities he desired in animals, so we see peculiar breeds of 
 hogs, horses, cattle, dogs, pigeons, poultry, and even of insects. He 
 has submitted vegetable life to his desires also. A thoroughbred in 
 any line is as certain of being superior in its specialty over an 
 ordinary-bred animal, as in the speed and endurance of the race- 
 horse, as the day is to follow the night. Man himself, however, 
 still breeds with reasonable recognition of the true qualities of 
 improvement and success in his race. We can get a thoroughbred 
 man as certainly as we have obtained a thoroughbred horse. The 
 difficulty under which we must labor in such an effort is the probable 
 necessity of changing from time to time the qualities for which we 
 breed, to secure progress and permanent superiority. In glancing 
 back through history, we find the standards best suited to success 
 and superiority to have often changed. At one time we find an 
 industrial type the niost necessary and the most promising ; at 
 another, the military and the fighting, with the industrial degraded 
 and enslaved. So wealth and glory, physique and intellect, have 
 alternately, with minor matters, been suited to bring and keep man 
 at the top. 
 
 Mind and intellect may safely be supposed to be the eventual road 
 to the promised land of a self-sustaining race. As has been already 
 said, all we want of the physique is to carry the mind with the now 
 necessary powers of reproduction. 
 
 It may be remarked here that great difierences in life-forms are 
 incapable of reproducing life. Where the difierences are less, we 
 may obtain progeny, but a progeny incapable of self-perpetuation, as 
 in the mule. Others, again, are doubtless still nearer in type, who 
 breed, and whose progeny breed, but whose thus mixed life must 
 eventually run out. 
 
 It is said that marriages between Jews and Americans are more 
 often infertile than those between Jews and Jews or Americans and 
 Americans. Here is a condition that if true demands careful atten- 
 tion in marriage. 
 
Wife Choice, 137 
 
 Cross fertilization in fruits often produces surprising perfection of 
 quality, together also with a lack or total absence of fertility. 
 
 In the same species, however, varieties combined in breeding give 
 a greater plasticity and capacity for change than we see in members 
 of the same variety. Darwin speaks of cross fertilization as being 
 productive of the most vigorous plants. Fritz MuUer shows that, in 
 at least some flowers, the different parts, male and female, in the 
 same blossom do not fertilize each other. The male element must be 
 carried to another flower. This would indicate that in such plants 
 qualities preventing close or continued in-breeding have been most 
 favorable to life. 
 
 The most beautiful of California flowers {Romneya Coulteri), sl 
 poppy, is said to have few fertile seeds when planted alone, but to 
 have a large seed vitality when planted in masses. This is a charac- 
 teristic of many California wild flowers, which, when found in vigor, 
 grow naturally in beds and masses, and so form striking features in 
 such spring landscapes as are not conquered to the plow. 
 
 Consequently, when we are in face of changing conditions as we 
 are to-day, and probably always will be, we may with advantage 
 make excursions out of an established breed of men to secure change 
 and adaptation to advances. At the same time we must be careful 
 not to go too far lest we run up against the dead wall of sterility. It 
 may occasionally be necessary to sacrifice some points of breeding 
 to secure reproductive power. This power is often weak in the 
 well bred of animals, and probably will be equally so in well-bred 
 men. 
 
 An incident of success in our present life is usually wealth. A 
 wealthy woman seldom makes a good wife, and still more rarely is 
 she happy as a wife or does she make a happy husband or family. 
 
 Women of wealthy families, who have maintained good qualities 
 through several generations are not so much to be feared on account 
 of their wealth as those of families who have come suddenly 
 into riches. One class of rich women, heiresses and co-heiresses, 
 should be altogether excluded. The tendency in such women to 
 sterility is strong. Perhaps the best place to find this tendency tabu- 
 lated, and to thus learn what it amounts to, is in Galton' s //eredifary 
 Genius, page 138. He there shows the tendency of able men elevated 
 to the English peerage to marry heiresses to support their new 
 dignity. He goes on to demonstrate that the extinction of peerages 
 so often noted is principally due to the marrying of heiresses. These 
 women are often entirely sterile, or have children without procreative 
 vigor, or leave children without vitality. Gal ton's researches are 
 very conclusive against heiresses as perpetuators of life. 
 
138 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 By heiress Galton means an only daughter with wealth ; by co- 
 heiress, one of two children. 
 
 A wealthy woman should generally be avoided. If a woman is 
 found in a wealth}^ family fitted for a wife in other things, she should 
 either be taken on condition that she bring none of her wealth into 
 your family, or that the wealth be made over to the husband abso- 
 lutely on the wedding day. The first method i's best, both in leaving 
 the husband's motives unimpeached and also in leaving the motives 
 for effort in him unweakened. 
 
 Few wealthy women have healthy bodies, morals, or minds. 
 Idleness is their destruction ; therefore wealth is of all things the 
 most fatal to families in happiness and the most effective extermi- 
 nating agent unless some other strong motive, as the desire of noble 
 or royal families to perpetuate themselves, overcomes these tendencies 
 by early training and constant effort. 
 
 It will doubtless occur to many that to turn all her property over 
 to the husband is a great sacrifice and risk for the woman to take. 
 But these should remember that the greatest risk of life is marriage. 
 In taking this step a woman stakes her happiness, honor, and im- 
 mortality. These are her all. Such a trivial incident of life as 
 wealth cannot be considered in comparison to them. If, therefore, 
 upon an examination women controlling wealth after marriage are 
 not found to be happy and do not make their ventures successful, 
 this fact may reasonably be deemed to have been an element in their 
 failure. When we make a great gamble, when the stake is high — 
 say life, — we should never hesitate to put at risk also any small or 
 secondary thing that might bring us to a successful issue. An 
 apparently cautious policy in such a crisis may be the height of 
 folly. Thus by failing to risk a toe when life is at stake we may 
 lose life itself and the toe also. A woman when she marries 
 should hesitate at no minor risk to make the greater gamble a 
 success. 
 
 Nature has given man the taller stature, the stronger muscles, 
 and the vital forces best suited to the outside conflict. The woman 
 has her superiorities as clearly defined. These are in the line of 
 child-bearing and child-rearing. 
 
 Nature gives man the headship. When marriage was devised 
 by mankind, man took the head of the family. This is the natural 
 condition of the family. Any other position for man is inferior and 
 unnatural. A family thus faultily constituted is in conflict with 
 nature. To contest against nature is a labor of Sisyphus. 
 
 The natural position of the wife or mother is not inferior, but is 
 grand and splendid. As the man cannot perform her highest work. 
 
Wife Choice, 1 39 
 
 so to place him in her position is to degrade him, taking him from 
 what he can do, and can do best, to place him where he cannot 
 perform the duties at all. 
 
 To place the woman at the head of the family, and consequently 
 to oblige her to stand the brunt of the struggle of life, is to place her 
 at a disadvantage, in which the family must share. She enters a 
 fight in which, if she be a true woman — that is, a mother, — she is 
 heavily handicapped. She is degraded as well as the man, and 
 diverted from those activities which she can perform best, and turned 
 to those she can only perform at a disadvantage. 
 
 Wealth may change the natural condition ; that is, the physical 
 and nerve power of the man may be more than counteracted by the 
 power of wealth in the hands of the woman to purchase those quali- 
 ties from others. Thus the man may, by this means, be pitted 
 single-handed against thousands of other men, hired directly or 
 indirectly by the woman. The man then, by artificial means, be- 
 comes the weaker of the two life partners. Nature is overthrown, 
 and misery is the result. 
 
 It is seldom that a wealthy wife is able altogether to resist the 
 temptation to use the power wealth gives, and to more or less upset 
 thereby the natural relation of the sexes in her marriage. 
 
 To save your own powers, which are increased by headship and 
 responsibility, and your own self-esteem, the counsel is repeated to 
 take a woman to wife from a wealthy family only on one of the 
 conditions named. 
 
 A husband should always be older than his wife. Five years' 
 difference is little enough, and fifteen not too much. Plato advises 
 a difference in age, between the contracting parties in marriage, of 
 twenty years, and lyycurgus laid down the ages of marriage for the 
 different sexes at thirty-seven for the man and seventeen for the 
 woman. These differences are extreme, and demand too long a 
 continence on the part of the male. 
 
 The reason why the man should be oldest, is that women lose 
 their sexual attractions sooner than men, and depend for a happy 
 marriage very much on them. Women at about the age of forty-five 
 lose their capacity to have children, while men do not lose this 
 capacity for an indefinite period after this age. 
 
 Thus a man marrying a woman of his own age, and, still more, 
 marrying one older than himself, finds after a time the wife dimin- 
 ished in sexual attraction and altogether incapable of bearing chil- 
 dren, while he still has the full activity and command of these his 
 most vital functions. This is a dangerous condition for a marriage 
 to get into. It should be counteracted by marrying a woman suf- 
 
140 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 ficiently younger than yourself to give a reasonable expectation that 
 both will grow old in these functions together. 
 
 Too early marriage is not advisable in either sex. While the 
 age of puberty in the male and in the female indicates the call of 
 nature to reproduce, still we know that the first efforts of reproduc- 
 tion in the flowers and seeds of plants are often imperfect. This is 
 probably true of animals, including man. Besides, the premature 
 use of the generative functions and organs weakens the constitution 
 and character, diminishes the prospect of life, and gives a progeny 
 tending to retrogression rather than to improvement, and sometimes 
 induces sterility. 
 
 From 18 to 20 is the best age for a bride, but 16 is not an impos- 
 sible age. It is not advisable to take a woman as wife who is over 
 25. Some English statistics show that one marriage in fourteen 
 of women between 15 and 19 is sterile, that nearly all marriages 
 between 20 and 24 are fertile, and that after 24 the proportion of 
 sterile marriages increases with the age of the bride. What these 
 statistics are worth I do not know, nor how the proportion of one 
 sterile marriage in fourteen before 20 is made up. It v/ould seem 
 probable that the first two or three years of this period, say 15, 
 16, and 17, would make the bulk of the sterility. 
 
 In this country the figures would not apply, as over most of our 
 territory the age of puberty comes earlier than in England. Conse- 
 quently the most fertile age would be from eighteen to twenty-two, 
 if the distance from the age of puberty is a governing cause in 
 woman's fertility and the English figures are authentic. Owing to 
 the increased chance of sterility after twenty-four or twenty-five, that 
 age in women is a pretty good limit to the wife chooser. One 
 marriage in eight is unproductive of living children in England, one 
 in four in Suffolk County, Mass., and probably the proportion of 
 sterility is increasing. The importance of this question will therefore 
 be seen. 
 
 In exceptional cases, such as a man marrying a second time when 
 pretty well advanced in life himself, the rule may be relaxed. Under 
 Such conditions it might be better to take a good virgin old enough 
 to understand herself, for youth and old age do not always make a 
 happy combination in matrimony. 
 
 A woman married after thirty has increased difficulty in bearing 
 children. This is owing to the lack of use of the reproductive parts, 
 which by their disuse become stiff and less yielding and less normal 
 in their action. For this reason first births after thirty have a larger 
 proportion than usual of breech, side, and other presentations of the 
 child more or less hard to deal with, and the perineum and cervix 
 
Wife Choice, 141 
 
 are oftener torn in such women. The proportion of the sexes of 
 first-born is reversed from mothers between tkirty and forty, and girls 
 predominate. 
 
 The recent studies of Eckhardt {Zeitschrift fUr Gebiirtshulfe und 
 Gyncckologie, xiv. , i , p. 44) confirming those of Kleinwachter show 
 that the mortahty of the children of primiparae increases with the 
 age of the mother. The mortality is nearly three times as great 
 amongst old primiparae as amongst the young. The difference be- 
 comes noticeable at twenty years of age and increases with acceler- 
 ating rapidity in each period of four years afterwards. Forceps 
 deliveries occur three times, and perforation five times, as often in old 
 primiparae as in young. 
 
 It may seem to some that all these conditions will be difficult to 
 find in woman, and that marriage will consequently become uncer- 
 tain on account of the impracticability of carrying out the rules in 
 this chapter. * 
 
 If such an idea takes possession of you, dismiss it at once. First, 
 I would rather you should marry ill than not marry at all ; and 
 second, the world is full -of good girls who are healthy in body, 
 morals, and mind. 
 
 The cause of the unhappiness of so many marriages is faulty 
 education and breeding in both men and women. Women correctly 
 educated are to be preferred as wives ; but a woman with the essen- 
 tials wed to a man of some force, who has been educated in the 
 realities of life, may be expected to turn out well. Women are im- 
 pressionable, and therefore errors, especially errors of omission in 
 their bringing up, can be overcome. They must be taken young, 
 however, if any change is expected. 
 
 In old countries, the principal considerations in the choice of a 
 wife are of a financial or social nature. In a new country, the choice 
 of a wife depends more on personal appearance, character, etc. The 
 latter are by far the safer guides. To 'make them perfect it is only 
 essential that in youth the man should have become thoroughly im- 
 pressed with the qualities which constitute a good woman, and 
 familiarized with the object of marriage — that is, the getting of pro- 
 geny and the consequent perpetuation of his life by means of them 
 and their descendants. 
 
 Instinct guides a man to a type of woman best fitted to perpetuate 
 the lives of both and leads him to lack interest in women of types un- 
 suited to his own. In extreme youth this instinct is often immature. 
 By means of romances and imperfect understanding, as well as by 
 the incomplete development of the reproductive instinct, young 
 people often make gross errors of choice, and sometimes come to con- 
 
142 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 sider that only one particular individual in the world can become 
 their mates and be truly loved. These ideas, when carried to an ex- 
 treme, result in much harm, sometimes in sickness, occasionally in 
 suicide and murder when the desire is disappointed. 
 
 It is therefore well to bear in mind that this instinct we call love 
 is really more for a type than for an individual, and that its concen- 
 tration on one person is a matter of convenience which may be trans- 
 ferred to another. Not so the ripe love to a fertile spouse. Here the 
 lives are fused indi visibly in the children. A true man once bound to 
 a woman by this tie must always be bound to her in feeling. 
 
 The instinct of love is the outcome of the necessity of reproduc- 
 tion. The young man should respect the instinct, not to become its 
 slave, but to look to it for light and guidance in the m3^ster}^ of 
 marriage. It has been often said that "love is blind." A saying 
 nearer the truth would be that love can see the spiritual and vital 
 harmonies best for immortality in the child. That a faulty education 
 may destroy the strength and truth of love is only too apparent. The 
 time has come for us to take off whatever bandages convention, 
 ignorance, or error has placed over Love's eyes. Reason should be 
 the salt with which to flavor love. 
 
 The only child-god of the ancients was " Cupid," the god of love. 
 Here is a beautiful harmony of truth, the child the god of love. 
 Nothing could be more true. ' Love is the spiritualized instinct of 
 reproduction. In healthy bodies and minds it is confined, to be loosed 
 only to persons of the opposite sex, whose age and vitalit}^ give 
 promise of good progeny. Without the child there is no god of love. 
 The child is the origin of love. Love is a sexual awakening that by 
 instinct drives us to perpetuate ourselves. Without the child it is 
 like the heavens without the sun. Without the child, love, bom in 
 us to bear again the child, must change. It may cool off to friendly 
 liking, to a sentiment such as persons of the same sex feel for each 
 other, or it may degenerate into fruitless lust where the wife is but a 
 prostitute to one man. 
 
 We must admit that the romantic love leading to marriage 
 changes in character afterward with or without the child. Without 
 progeny, its change is for the worse, while with the child it may 
 grow in strength and steadfastness. 
 
 In France and in most of the countries on the continent of 
 Europe, a dot or dowry is required from the bride. Coincident with 
 this rule is the custom of unduly immuring the 3^oung girls, and 
 thus preventing a proper development of character. By this system 
 the man sees little of the woman before marriage, and his matrimonial 
 views are largely controlled by the size of the dot. Nature is put in a 
 
Wife Choice, 143 
 
 dark closet. I cannot believe that this system is one that will lead to a 
 progressive and improved race. A further feature of this method is 
 a liberty of the woman, after marriage, inconsistent with her previous 
 training, and for which she is not prepared. Theoretically, this 
 system appears indefensible. The dot makes money, and not phy- 
 sique or intellect, the guide in matrimony. And the education of the 
 girl and, the style of courtship make it difficult for the man to know 
 anything about the character and type of the woman. Virtue alone 
 is assured, and this in such a way as to make its subsequent main- 
 tenance by the woman doubtful. If the size of a dot was an unfailing 
 guide, or any guide to a girl's suitability as a wife and future mother, 
 something could be said for the system, but wealth is, at the best, for 
 this purpose an unreliable guide for reasons already set forth. 
 
 A large dot may make a family wealthy, but wealth is not what 
 we live for. As compared to the perpetuation and improvement of 
 life in our children, it is as the refuse in a swill barrel to a Thanks- 
 giving feast spread thick with richest viands. 
 
 While the French system does not seem good, there are sugges- 
 tions in it that may lead to good. Marriages under this system are 
 made according to reason. Instinct has little or no part in the 
 matter. If the reason were but true and reliable, if the objects 
 sought to be obtained were but the true interests of the individual 
 and of the race, who can doubt but that the results of such a system 
 would be better than our haphazard, happy-go-lucky total absence 
 of method. Some things, however, must cause us to pause upon 
 such a decision. If the instinct of love be too grossly violated, 
 nature will be revenged. The intimacies of marriage leave one room 
 enough to pay penalties for error. It is said by some that even 
 sterility may result from a violation of the instincts leading up to 
 reproduction. 
 
 Where you are favorably impressed with a young woman as a 
 future wife, it will be well to make a business of seeing a number of 
 the same t5^e. If she be a German, go to a German quarter ; if she 
 be English, look up English people, and so on. The reason of this 
 is that an individual representing a type favorable to you for 
 reproduction, but new to you, may at once awaken a strong feeling 
 of what is called love. You are attracted and commit yourself, when 
 perhaps you might easily have found another member of the same 
 type very superior to the one who has led you to perceive what type 
 you should take. 
 
 It should also be taught to young men about to marry, that they 
 ought to make a business of seeing under varying conditions those 
 who attract them. Most of us have a mask we wear in public, and 
 
144 1^^^ Conquest of Death. 
 
 one not always eas}^ to see behind. A 3'Oung lady charming in 
 social gatherings should therefore be sought unexpectedly and in 
 situations where she may be presumed to be off her guard. 
 
 With some, love before marriage — that is, the feeling of attraction 
 and desire for an individual — becomes passion, and is not to be 
 regulated by the reason. With proper training beforehand, such 
 cases ought to be rare. When cases of this kind threatening im- 
 proper marriages occur, travel, separation, and new scenes afford the 
 best antidote. Always in cases involving these instincts, manage- 
 ment of a very judicious kind is required. Direct antagonism is 
 seldom advantageous. 
 
 When you become engaged, marry. Make investigations and 
 complete probations beforehand, but when you have made up 3^ our 
 mind and obtained the woman's consent, complete the transaction at 
 once. I think that a marriage quick from the engagement is the 
 most likely to be happy. For a man of any warmth of feeling, to be 
 engaged is to be in a sort of mild purgatory. If this state be 
 prolonged, it cannot but react upon the health. The awakened 
 reproductive instinct continually repressed may have very serious 
 consequences upon the constitution. 
 
 Young women are less subject, but still subject, to the same 
 suffering and injury. Dr. Goodell in his Lessons in Gynecology, page 
 365, attributes this as a frequent cause of uterine disease, and there- 
 fore advises against long engagements to marry, where the caresses 
 sanctioned by custom in this country are permitted. He is also out- 
 spoken in condemning the kissing, hugging, and forfeit games 
 common amongst our middle classes, for the same reason. I am 
 able to confirm his statements by one or two instances that have 
 come under my observation. Certainly mothers and girls them- 
 selves should be careful in these matters. 
 
 Use judgment and deliberation in choosing. The choice made — 
 marry. I recommend you to choose by your twenty-fifth year. 
 
 Intemperance or insanity in a family should be a bar in marriage, 
 for either of these in the parents will certainly transmit serious weak- 
 ness to the children, while the appearance of such conditions in a 
 brother or sister of the proposed bride will indicate a constitutional 
 taint likely to break out in her children in some injurious form, if 
 not insanity or intemperance, then consumption or other destructive 
 disease. 
 
 You should not marry a consumptive, or one with syphilis or 
 any constitutional disease. Close consanguinity in marriage, from 
 the evidence at my command, is injurious when there is a taint in 
 the family constitution, such as gout, consumption, etc. Otherwise, 
 
Wife Choice, 145 
 
 it seems to have no bad effects, except where long persisted in from 
 generation to generation. 
 
 Advantageous^ variations of the individual amongst domesticated 
 animals have been maintained and increased by careful breeding. 
 One necessity for success in this is now recognized. It is in-breeding, 
 with an occasional cross to add vigor in secondary characteristics, 
 T^hich, by the in-breeding for a special object, are becoming too 
 weak. 
 
 In the thoroughbred horse, in the Jersey cow, in the Percheron 
 stallion, and in the Durham bull we see the advantage and necessity 
 of in-breeding to perpetuate superior qualities and its lack of 
 destructive effects. 
 
 Still many curious things come out of excess of in-breeding : one is 
 a great increase in the proportion of male to female progeny, and a 
 tendency to sterility. 
 
 Doubtless attention to the digestion, vitality, bones, eyes, etc., of 
 these animals would have made them as superior in these points as 
 they are in those for which they are bred. 
 
 Amongst animal breeders even brothers and sisters are bred to- 
 gether. Weakness in reproduction is a frequent condition in high- 
 bred animals. How far it may be due to in-breeding is now hard to 
 say. Amongst men also, brothers and sisters as well as cousins and 
 other close relatives have often been permitted to marry. The royal 
 family of the Ptolemies in Egypt, of whom Cleopatra was the last, 
 had a number of marriages between brothers and sisters and other 
 close blood connections. The Ptolemies ruled in Egypt for a long 
 period and probably will rank with the average royal families in all 
 respects. Their frequent close in-breeding was not productive, and 
 the royal line was in only two instances dependent on such mar- 
 riages for its continuity. Other wives than those of the same family 
 were the means of maintaining the dynasty. 
 
 The old myth of Isis and Osiris, a brother and sister married to 
 each other, would indicate that this sort of marriage was not un- 
 common amongst the still more ancient Egyptians. 
 
 There are many reasons, however, to justify the universal rule of 
 civilized nations against the marriage of brothers and sisters, and the 
 almost universal prejudice, often re-enforced by rule, against the 
 marriage of cousins. 
 
 This useful absence of sexual love amongst near kindred is now 
 attributed to an instinct, evolved by its utility, against reproduction 
 with those with whom we have been in close association from child- 
 hood. In man's regulation it takes the most extraordinar}^ forms 
 as seen in exogamy or the marrying outside of the tribe. In some 
 
1 46 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 places (China) persons of the same clan name cannot marr>^, al- 
 though not in any way related, while thej^ can marry persons of 
 dilBferent clan names to whom they are related. 
 
 It is needless to discuss the numerous degrees of consanguinity 
 prohibited or discouraged by the rules of men. It is enough to say 
 that the marriage of parents and children or children of the same 
 family with each other should be barred. Beyond this there seems 
 no good reason for going. 
 
 Constitutional taint transmits itself generally by producing its 
 like, but oftentimes there is a sort of transmutation. Thus a con- 
 sumptive may have consumptive children, but idiocy, insanity, spinal 
 disease, deformity, intemperance, or constitutional immorality, all 
 steadily tending to sterility, may be the outcome of such a marriage. 
 When you find any weakness in yourself, do not on account of these 
 remarks despair. The taint, if not too strongly established, may be 
 eradicated. 
 
 I have known of such instances. Careful life under the best con- 
 ditions and judicious breeding for several generations are necessary 
 to achieve this result. 
 
 There is a large risk to be undertaken when marrying one who is 
 diseased. Therefore, while the world has plenty of healthy women 
 by whom you can strengthen your breed, do not marry weaklings, 
 whose defects your children will at least require generations to eradi- 
 cate. They may, you should remember, never succeed in doing this, 
 the eventful result being to sink your life in theirs under an impossible 
 load. 
 
 It is well, as has been said, to avoid only children in marriage. 
 Such a child is very precious to its parents. The attention of these 
 is concentrated upon it. The value the parents set on the life of an 
 only child is so great that they generally keep the precious one from 
 every possible risk. This course prevents a due and natural develop- 
 ment of self-reliance and character ; therefore only children are rarely 
 distinguished in after life. 
 
 The large value set on them generally results in coddling and 
 pampering, which treatment reacts unfavorably on the child's nature. 
 Only too often do we see the only child ruined, or as it is commonlj^ 
 called spoiled, by the afiection of the parents. These misguided 
 ones implant in it vanity, self-sufficiency, bad manners, and withal a 
 plentiful lack of character. 
 
 The parental feeling of tenderness, which removes ever>^ possible 
 obstacle from the path of the child, removes also the only means the 
 child has for development of force and character. 
 
 Speaking generally, the best promise at once of fertility and of a 
 
Wife Choice, 147 
 
 well-formed character is found in girls members of large families. If 
 the parents have had large families, the girls may be expected to in- 
 herit their reproductive powers. With many brothers and sisters the 
 edge of unreasonable selfishness and other bad character traits is 
 likely to be taken off. The statistics of T. W. Hollands show that 
 morality is more common in large families than in small ones. Sir 
 W. Gull says that the members of large families furnish the strong- 
 est members of the Indian Civil Service (Finck). Franklin ad- 
 vises a wife-seeker to take her out of a bunch of sisters. 
 
 Dr. Chervin, a distinguished statistician, states that in the depart- 
 ments of Kure, Oise, Orne, and lyower Seine, where the families have 
 less children, the number of recruits discharged from the military 
 service for physical disability is the greatest. Dr. Luis de Serd says 
 that in French families with a small number of children these are 
 less healthy and vigorous than the progeny of large families. He 
 attributes small families to preventive measures taken by the mar- 
 ried. Regarding one of these known as ''withdrawal," in which 
 the sexual act is not completed, he cites physicians' opinions to the 
 efiect that it is the cause of much ill-health, especially of those forms 
 of progressive paralysis which of late have been spreading so widely. 
 De Sere also expresses the opinion very strongly that all such meas- 
 ures exert a deplorable effect on the cerebro-spinal system in man, 
 and also that such children as are bom under these conditions tend 
 to weakness and inferiority. The woman also is injured through 
 excitement without complete satisfaction. The results appear most 
 in her uterus. Only children are therefore not desirable. The way 
 things are going it wiU be next to impossible to maiTy into an Ameri- 
 can family if a large number of children is necessary for a choice. 
 
 We cannot be strict in this rule, but still avoid an only child. While 
 Americans continue to have two to a marriage the difiiculty of se- 
 curing a proper virgin for a wife, when found, may be reduced by the 
 knowledge of what a woman admires. 
 
 The female in marriage needs protection. It is therefore easy to 
 understand that she likes courage and daring in a man as well as 
 energy and force. 
 
 A person of one sex is under difiiculties when undertaking to 
 portray the inner feelings of those of the opposite sex. There 
 is an element of error in all such portrayals against which we 
 should guard. 
 
 It is, howevei", a fair presumption that the novels written by men, 
 taking them as a class, portray the qualities of woman most ad- 
 mired by men, and with equal reason we may expect the novels of 
 women will portray the qualities of men most admired by women. 
 
148 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 In glancing through a large number of books by men, we find their 
 favorite women characters peculiarly feminine, and, on the other 
 hand, the favorite male characters in women's novels are forceful and 
 masculine, often to an extravagant extent. The difficulty of man in 
 fathoming the heart of woman is somewhat removed by the uncon- 
 scious exposition of a woman's own heart, which her novel is. As 
 is the excellence of the novel so is the truth of her own reflection. 
 Women's novel heroes are often portrayed as ugly but not weak. 
 
 A study of women's novels will show a man that he has nothing 
 to hope for in gaining a woman's love by throwing away his manhood 
 and his manliness. 
 
 A woman studying men's novels will find little encouragement to 
 the masculine type of women for securing the love of man. 
 
 A man seeking a wife, therefore, should never neglect to make 
 an aggressive and persistent fight for the woman he loves. Some 
 strategy, however, is not out of place. lyong absences cool love and 
 diminish interest, but short ones intensify the fire. Thus a lover, 
 if he finds his suit not progressing favorably, may increase the girl's 
 interest by a short absence, and increase by the same opportunity for 
 reflection his own inventions and energy for conquest. 
 
 Many minor matters, looking to successful love-making, might 
 be suggested, but the instinct of love is so domineering when it takes 
 possession of one, that advice to the lover is like water to the back 
 of a duck. Neither make any impression. What we must work for 
 is to form the character beforehand, so that love will take the true 
 course and attach the young man to the proper type of persons only. 
 The reason may eventually be a better guide to marriage than is 
 love. This can hardly be said to be the case now. 
 
 An inquiry well worthy of attention is the effect of the vocation 
 of the parents upon their children. Dr. Down, in the Medical 
 Record, has given a number of figures on this point. He says that 
 the percentage of idiots and of persons afterward eminent in the 
 whole population born to fathers in three of the professions is : 
 
 Idiots. Eminent Men. 
 Lawyers ... 3 per cent. 1 1 per cent. 
 
 Doctors . . . 4 " " 9 " " 
 
 Clergymen . . 18 " '* 4 " '' 
 
 As far as these figures are reliable, they show either that the 
 strongest minds tend to select the law or medicine as a profession, 
 and the weakest, theology, or that the effect upon the parent of these 
 vocations is very different. 
 
 A woman complete and sound on the reproductive question, both 
 as to wish and capacity, comprises in this qualification all things 
 
Wife Choice, 149 
 
 necessary for a wife. For this she must be suitable to the man in type, 
 of sound body and developed intellect, and withal well reared in 
 manners and modesty. She must be a virgin, and possess a strong 
 instinct of motherhood. She must be so possessed of virtue that her 
 husband may feel complete security in the paternity of his children. 
 
 The writings of Francis Galton and of Henry Maudsley show the 
 influence of heredity on the capacity of the individual. Read them, 
 so that you will understand the importance of some investigation 
 into the family record of a proposed mate. You cannot find the 
 perfect in humanity ; it would be but a waste of time to look for it. 
 On the other hand, it is of great importance to you to avoid unions 
 with families that are behind the average in either physique or brain 
 capacity, or tending to sterility. 
 
 You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Bad seed, poor 
 crop. Bad mother, poor child. The choice of a wife is the one event 
 of life more than any other which establishes our happiness or misery 
 here, and, through our children, our destiny in ages to come. 
 
 Some appreciate its importance so much that the instinct of repro- 
 duction is overcome, and they never marry. This is like the sailor 
 on the desert island with two lots of food, one poisoned, the other 
 good. In this story the sailor, fearing the poison, ate neither, and 
 died of starvation. By a little judicious tasting, the sailor could 
 doubtless have discriminated between the two foods, but in any case 
 it would have been the part of wisdom to have selected one of the 
 foods and eaten. In that way he would have had one chance out 
 of two for life, while a refusal to eat meant a painful and slow death 
 by starvation. So in marrying, you may be successful or you may 
 not, but choose a wife you must. The question is one of life or 
 death. Children and immortality in promise, or death and extermi- 
 nation in sterility. 
 
 If the choice of a wife gives you the disaster of a sterile woman, 
 you must divorce her and choose again. No children is the one 
 thing that is beyond all pardon in a wife. Knowing the risks, use 
 care in choosing ; but, knowing also the certainty of extermination 
 without children, do what you must bravely and in time. If you 
 fail, you may still choose again. Choose then wisely if you can, 
 but choose, and do it in your prime. 
 
 The orange blossom is the emblem of marriage. It is the flower 
 of that fruit which produces more to the acre than any other known 
 in the temperate zone. It is the emblem of fertility. So wisely 
 chosen an emblem should point the married to the great object of 
 married life — that is, to fruits. 
 
('- 
 
 ^T>: 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 THK CHII,D. 
 
 THE treatment of the child involves so much more than it is 
 ordinarily considered to do, and the improvement of our 
 immortality as represented by the child is of such paramount 
 importance, that it seems reasonable to consider this subject from a 
 very wide point of view. 
 
 Our lives are affected by events of to-day and still more by those 
 accumulated influences from the past ages of the world's history. 
 Those events already accomplished are beyond our control. The 
 effects of our deeds will likewise be beyond the control of our descend- 
 ants. While the past cannot be changed, it may still act as a guide 
 to prevent the repetition of error. Thus is the utility of the study of 
 the bygone made clear. The history of a family is interesting in its 
 indications of the weaknesses to be anticipated and overcome, and of 
 the strong points to be developed and brought out in the children of 
 such families. 
 
 These ancient influences may well deserve our attention and repay 
 some study, in that they show the importance of regulating our own 
 lives to secure the best heritage of health and character for our chil- 
 dren. We may transmit an inheritance physical, mental, and moral 
 from our life of to-day to our lives of to-morrow. The inheritance 
 may be one for salvation or one for damnation. 
 
 It rests largely with the individual as to which it shall be. As we 
 are influenced and our lives colored by the acts of our fathers, mothers, 
 grandfathers, grandmothers, and ancestors, so our children's lives 
 will be largely stamped and controlled by what we do before their 
 birth. A young man or woman who contracts preventable disease 
 through ignorance, carelessness, or folly, and thereby injures the 
 physique, or who by idleness or excess enters the camp of vice and 
 thereby injures the moral nature as well as the physical, is injuring 
 not only himself or herself, but is likewise inaugurating a line of 
 suffering and misery that may, through children, curse his or her life 
 through indefinite ages, or it may exterminate such person altogether. 
 
 The law of Moses expresses this penalty (we must say dreadful 
 penalty) clearly enough : "I, the I^ord thy God, am a jealous God, 
 
 150 
 
The Child. 
 
 151 
 
 visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children unto the third 
 and fourth generation of them that hate me. " As we suffer in con- 
 stitutional defects, or gain in force either physical or moral, or both, 
 from the acts of our ancestors, so will our children suffer for our bad 
 acts or benefit by our good ones for periods of indefinite time. Thus 
 our own suffering for sin must go on in our children, and in them we 
 ourselves have a direct personal suffering, for we are the child and 
 the child is ourselves. 
 
 From these considerations, conduct leading to physical or moral 
 deterioration will have less standing and less excuse as the results of 
 such acts are understood ; while conduct leading to physical and 
 moral health, and consequently to happiness, will be given increased 
 incentive with the increased knowledge of the duration of the reward. 
 
 So in the treatment of children, the first point is the treatment of 
 ourselves even long before the period of conception of the child, for 
 we thus treat the child in futuro. These are matters to impress 
 upon the young, for doubtless by such means increased value will be 
 set on physical and intellectual work and upon morality. 
 
 While physical, intellectual, and moral activity is essential to 
 those who would bear children equal to or better than themselves, 
 it must also be remembered that excessive physical work, over- 
 athletic training, and exhausting mental exercise are alike opposed to 
 reproduction. The vitality of the individual is increased and main- 
 tained by a due amount of physical and mental w^ork. No one can 
 be healthy without this, and no one can be the parent of a sound child 
 without reasonable bodily and mental exercise. But excessive or pre- 
 mature effort of body or mind exhausts the vitality, though the muscle 
 or brain tissue, according to the line of activity, may be increased. 
 
 By such means the development of the whole man becomes uneven 
 and one-sided. Thus our years may be shortened by too much 
 athletics as well as by too sedentary a life ; the mind may become 
 deranged by the overwork of a business or literary man as well as by 
 the intellectual inactivity of the shepherd or of the prisoner in solitary 
 confinement. 
 
 Excess of idleness or excess of work tends to extermination. The 
 effect on the individual is of necessity reflected in his reproductive 
 powers. In idleness, license and lust prostitute and injure the body, 
 morals, and mind. Through the non-use of bodily and mental qual- 
 ities, the vigor of these disappears, leaving a hyper-delicacy and 
 refinement which dims, if it does not extinguish, sexual feeling and 
 the reproductive instinct ; or it may abnormally develop this, with an 
 equally exterminating effect. Such children as are born under either 
 condition will tend to be inferior to the life, at its commencement, of 
 
152 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 the parent, and will tend to reflect the parent's condition at the time 
 of fertilization and conception. 
 
 On the other hand, exhausting body or mind work will weaken 
 the sexual and reproductive instincts as well as the vitality of the 
 individual, so that a parent thus w^orked out will be unable to trans- 
 mit superiorities of muscle or mind acquired, by the excessive strain 
 practised. Men of the greatest muscle and athletic pov/er and men 
 of transcendent mind development, whom we call geniuses, have, as a 
 rule, no children or children of inferior constitution and rarely trans- 
 mit the superior endowments of the parent. 
 
 We must not suppose from this that superior power of body or 
 mind is opposed and fatal to reproduction, or that improved qualities 
 can not be transmitted. 
 
 Man has continually progressed through many ups and downs, 
 from a universal use of rough stone instruments to the civilization 
 of to-day. The progress has been chiefly mental. Mental work,, 
 impossible to primitive man, is doubtless easy and commonplace to 
 the higher types of to-day. We may affirm this from the fact that 
 tribes of men in a condition similar, as to the use of tools, to w^hat all 
 primitive men at one time were in, have a mental capacity inferior to 
 our own, and an average brain weight of males running six to 
 twelve ounces less than the brain weights of native male Americans.. 
 
 Thus the genius of these people might have a brain below our 
 average. Mental work in such a savage genius, that would prevent 
 reproduction, at least with improvement, would with our average 
 man be perhaps insufficient to produce the best results in his 
 children. 
 
 There is an amount of work excessive and opposed to the best 
 results in reproduction, which varies according to the development 
 and power of the individual. What we must look to in this matter 
 is a conservation of vitality with which to reproduce acquired im- 
 provements. Work alone will give us this vitality, and work alone 
 will give the improvement to transmit. Excessive work may give 
 an improvement to the individual, but through an exhausted vitality^ 
 such improvement cannot be transmitted. Idleness is fatal. While 
 overwork may not be fatal, or may be recovered from, the effects of 
 idleness prolonged to the second generation are rarely overcome. 
 
 Each individual must draw the line for him or herself. It should 
 never be forgotten that the brain power giving intellect and a possi- 
 bility of the highest morality of the superior races of the world is 
 a precious inheritance, the result of indefinite ages of time in devel- 
 opment through pain, sacrifice, and sorrow. To perpetuate this 
 brain power is a duty, to improve it a grand achievement. 
 
The Child. ' 153 
 
 It is a great misfortune to the world to have one superior brain 
 lost in sterility. The work of a Shakespeare will not compensate for 
 the loss of a Shakespearian mind. A Shakespeare's mind transmitted 
 with its full force may compose poems and plays at any time. Such 
 a mind once lost, what ages will it take to develop another so great. 
 Certainly Shakespeare's children did not show his mental power. 
 Whether this was owing to a great inferiority of brain in his wife 
 compared to his own, excessive brain work, or to something else, 
 such as dissipation, etc., we cannot say. A race- horse bred to an ass 
 may produce a very fine mule, but always a mule — ears, heels, and 
 sterility, — and never a race-horse. Thus a Shakespeare, to perpetuate 
 his mental qualities in any force, must breed to a woman with a 
 brain of at least good development, and can expect but poor progeny 
 from a woman whose brain is below the average of her sex in the 
 class to which the man belongs. 
 
 It may be said that the intellect of husband or wife, whichever 
 be the stronger, must be modified and diminished by the ever 
 inferiority of the mind of one of the partners. It is true that this 
 adulteration will pull down the higher, but, also, it will improve the 
 lower, and with the child the improvement gains the possibility 
 of permanence. 
 
 No written book or individual act can perpetuate life as does the 
 child. Books and acts may be forgotten, or deemed right to-day 
 may be found wrong to-morrow. Of the billions on billions of men 
 who have lived, how few are remembered ; of the millions on millions 
 of writings that have been made, how few are of use to-day. 
 
 The transmitted intellect, however, will live, and though its 
 achievement be lessened to-day, by the necessity of reproduction, its 
 possibilities of achievement in the future are unbounded. 
 
 The slowness of evolution and improvement must not discourage 
 us. When we reflect upon the extraordinary development of man 
 since the historical period commenced, and upon the fact that our 
 own race is of recent emergence from barbarism, with no probable 
 physical inheritance from Egyptian, Greek, or Roman, or any other 
 highly civilized race, we may be surprised at the shortness of our 
 development, reckoning by generations. Two hundred and fifty 
 generations, calculating each one at twenty-five years, carries us 
 beyond the accepted age of history, say seven thousand years. Fifty- 
 six generations will more than cover the development of the Anglo- 
 Saxon race firom a condition of barbarism to its present high estate. 
 
 While appreciating the difiicultics before us in the attempt to reach 
 immortality through our children and to improve them to a point not 
 now comprehensible, we must not exaggerate these diflSculties. 
 
154 ' The Conquest of Death, 
 
 For the purposes of this chapter, the treatment of a child may be 
 said to commence at conception. But, while this limitation is set, it 
 is only so set because the chapter would be otherwise, and properly, 
 a history and catechism of life. The treatment of every child born 
 and to be born has been going on from time immemorial, and every 
 act done, or to be done, was or is to be a treatment of the child. Such 
 a discussion of this subject would require a library in itself. 
 
 These reasons make it perhaps permissible to take up the treat- 
 ment of the child when its individual life commences. 
 
 The first budding life of the child, still unrecognizable in its indi- 
 viduality, involves the existence of all the lives and influences which 
 enter into it and of the universe itself. It will be apparent to any 
 reasonable person that all human qualities, whether physical, intel- 
 lectual, or moral, that will preserve or improve, should be guarded 
 and developed, while such as tend in an opposite direction should be 
 discouraged and if possible destroyed ; all for the sake of one's self 
 renewed or to be renewed in the child. 
 
 When the spermatozoon of the male meets and fertilizes the ovum 
 in the female, a new life has commenced and the lives of the father 
 and mother are renewed. Let us proceed to the treatment of the 
 mother and child from this period. 
 
 Conception in the vast majority of cases takes place from sexual 
 connection either a day or two before or a few days after the men- 
 strual flow. Its most marked and general first sign is a cessation of 
 the menstrual flow. The other signs may be learned in an obstetrical 
 work. The duration of pregnancy is about 278 days. The extreme 
 term is set down by Play fair at 295 days, by L. M. Maur at 334 days, 
 and by Simpson at 336 days. 
 
 Dr. E. J. Abbott of St. Paul, Minnesota, reports a case in which 
 the last menstrual period occurred on April 3 to 6, 1888 ; symp- 
 toms of pregnancy commenced about May ist ; quickening was clear 
 and certain in October ; delivery occurred April 20, 1889, a term of 
 over a year : the child was taken by forceps and weighed ten and 
 one half pounds. 
 
 Pregnancy is the condition of a woman after conception and until 
 the child is bom. The simplest method of calculating the probable 
 time of delivery of a child in utero is, add seven to the date of com- 
 mencement of the last menses and then count back three months : 
 thus, if the last menses commenced on November 5th, we add seven 
 which makes twelve, and count back three months and determine 
 August 12th as the probable day of delivery. 
 
 From the moment of conception the mother should avoid nervous 
 or physical shocks or undue strain upon the nervous system. On 
 
The Child, 155 
 
 the other hand both mind and body should be occupied with some 
 useful work. In this connection, it may be well to call attention to 
 the fact that work to which the pregnant woman is accustomed is 
 safest. Thus horseback riding is exceedingly dangerous for a preg- 
 nant woman, still I have known the case of a woman who being an 
 habitual rider continued this exercise after conception and nearly to 
 the day of the child's birth without ill effect. There are certain kinds 
 of exercise, and horseback riding is one, that should, as a rule, be 
 avoided. 
 
 Overhand movements are bad, as are any exercises in which jars, 
 jerks, or falls are likely to occtur. Miscarriage is somewhat more 
 likely to happen about the times the menses would have appeared 
 had not pregnancy supervened. The seven or eight days correspond- 
 ing to these periods, therefore, should be specially watched to prevent 
 misfortune. 
 
 Dr. Verdi's advice in his book Maternity is good. "Take 
 daily exercise in the open air ; do not lace, do not run, do not jump ; 
 do not drive unsafe horses ; give up dancing and horseback riding ; 
 do not plunge into cold water. Many women, in your condition, 
 will tell you they have done these things and no harm befell them ; 
 still, do none of them." To this may be added : Do not drive over 
 rough roads or engage in exercises where overhand or reaching move- 
 ments are required, such as clothes-hanging, etc. It is also said by 
 Holbrook, that treadle work, as on a sewing-machine or organ, is 
 bad. When an accident does happen that is deemed liable to bring 
 on a miscarriage, rest and your physician are the friends to invoke. 
 Everything should be done to quiet the woman's apprehensions, for 
 the fear of the loss may be so strong as to bring on the abortion which 
 otherwise would not have occurred. 
 
 Miscarriage sometimes happens without any sufl&cient apparent 
 cause ; in other cases nothing seems able to produce it. Perhaps no 
 authenticated relation will do so much to tranquillize a woman, at 
 this time, as that of the native in Bombay, who, when far advanced 
 in her term, was knocked down in the street by an English physician's 
 horse and run over by the wheel of his carriage. His interest and 
 fears followed her case and to his wonder everything went on as 
 though nothing had happened. 
 
 Exercise and work have other excellent reasons to be practised. 
 Of a moderate kind, they are essential to the welfare of both mother 
 and child. By such means the woman's constitution is kept up and 
 through it the child's also. Malformation in the child or unusual 
 presentation at birth becomes less likely. The muscles of the woman 
 are kept in better tone and the birth will be shorter and easier, and 
 
156 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 the recovery of the woman prompter, than if useful outdoor exercise 
 had not been had. 
 
 As a rule, pregnant women have an instinctive desire to seek 
 seclusion. It is a useful safeguard within proper limits. This feel- 
 ing protects women in this interesting condition from the risks and 
 dangers which a general participation in the outside activities of life 
 would incur. Thus, they avoid balls, crowds, travelling, etc. This 
 is good. Amongst civilized women, however, the instinct often 
 induces to a morbid avoidance of all outdoor life and of social recrea- 
 tion of any kind. A pregnant women should be encouraged to visit 
 her friends, to take reasonable social recreation, and to maintain quiet 
 outdoor life and interest up to the latest possible period. A woman 
 mewed up alone in this condition tends to a dwelling upon dangers 
 she imagines, to a nursing of customary symptoms into disease, to 
 abnormal fancies and to magnifying minor troubles into a real suffer- 
 ing. Therefore, while appreciating the fundamental advantage of 
 the instinct for seclusion, its abuse should be carefullj^ warded off. 
 If no other ill happens, such excess of seclusion will make the 
 woman's life so much a burden by loneliness and deprivation of cus- 
 tomary resources that she will dread pregnancy. Thus must grow 
 a feeling antagonistic to the family and to its immortality. The 
 benefit of the doubt should be given toward doing too much rather 
 than doing too little. 
 
 The retiring disposition of women, when pregnant, is most promi- 
 nent in cities. In city life such feeling must be accentuated both 
 through the number of persons the woman meets when out, and 
 also by the general attitude of antagonism to childbirth in our 
 Sodoms and Gk)morrahs. From these facts, it will be seen that a 
 country life is an essential to the mother of a family, both as to her 
 health and comfort and as to that of the children she bears. It 
 must be said, however, that city women walk more, as a general 
 rule, than do country ones. Shopping and gadding about the 
 streets is doubtless a cause of a good deal of exercise to these 
 women. The woman in the country is not from that fact alone 
 living a healthy life. She must have a useful occupation. Exer- 
 cise for health is so monotonous that it is rarely long continued. It 
 may be helped by games, but utility or object is that alone upon which 
 the parturient woman must rely to keep up a good muscular and 
 mental condition of the system. City life is objectionable from 
 another point of view, and that is, that it is in all probability exter- 
 minating to the race as it is now constituted. Children in the 
 country have a great advantage over those in the city, physically, 
 mentally, and morally. On account of the earlier sexual develop- 
 
The Child, 157 
 
 ment of city-reared children, I was under the impression that there 
 would also be a mental precocity among them. On an investigation 
 of this subject I find that this is not the case. All the teachers I 
 have questioned, with city and country experience, state to me that, 
 at the same age, children in the country have a better and stronger 
 brain development than those in the city. The risks of disease, such 
 as puerperal fever in the mother and the diseases of childhood in the 
 babes are much reduced in the country. 
 
 The diet of the mother should be nutritious and easy of digestion.' 
 The common idea that she should eat for two is a mistake. Her 
 appetite when eating slowly will be a safe guide in a great majority 
 of cases for the quantity of food. Certain cravings frequently occur 
 at this time. When there is nothing clearly harmful in them they 
 should be gratified. 
 
 Inconveniences of various kinds often occur to women during 
 gestation, — morning sickness, constipation, etc. Considerable fruit in 
 the diet seems beneficial in both these cases. When such troubles 
 become serious and afiect the health of the mother, or endanger the 
 carrying of the child, a physician must be called. 
 
 The situation of the house is important. It should be sunny, 
 well drained, accessible to pure water, and the soil under it healthy. 
 The drinking-water and drainage should be examined with special 
 care. Drinking-water is a general means for the maintenance and 
 diflfusion of certain disease germs. Well water is always dangerous, 
 and river water, in a settled country where the domestic drainage 
 and refuse of the population is certain to more or less pollute it, is 
 also to be avoided. All water for drinking should be boiled before- 
 hand for the purpose of killing any germs or parasitic life it may 
 contain. This rule should only be relaxed when the source of 
 supply and its watershed are thoroughly known. 
 
 In a dry country, where the waters are heavily charged with 
 alkalies, some provision of rain water or distilled water should be 
 made, especially where the individual tendency is toward the forma- 
 tion of calculi. The importance of care with drinking-water is 
 shown by the study of epidemics. The typhoid-fever epidemic at 
 Plymouth, Pa., was directly traced to one case on the bank of the 
 stream supplying the town with water. Very many sufferers and a 
 large number of deaths were the result of this epidemic. 
 
 Recently the chronic cholera prevailing at the Takashima Coal 
 Mines, Japan, has been completely stopped by the substitution of 
 distilled water for that brought from the mainland, while the islands 
 
 ^ See Chapter on Treatment of Wife. 
 
158 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 about, using the old supply, still continue to be devastated by this 
 fell disease. 
 
 The Chinese city of Canton is on a nearly level plain. It has no 
 system of sewerage. The refuse water and filth flow off in shallow 
 drains in the middle of the streets with slabs of stone over them. 
 Part of the time even these are choked up. The dimg and urine, 
 however, are to a great extent taken away as fertilizers. The water 
 supply of this great and filthy city is derived from wells four to 
 fifteen feet in depth. The comparative healthiness of Canton must 
 be attributed to the practice of drinking only boiled water, as in tea. 
 Villages are not as desirable as the country, plain and simple. 
 
 Around the woman objects of beauty should be placed and also 
 things that will lead to high thoughts of heroic deeds and great per- 
 formances. The books read should also be of superior character. 
 In the courts of Europe, amongst the ruling families, where the wel- 
 fare of the children to be born, who will become nobles and kings, 
 is much considered, the rooms of lying-in women are carefully 
 arranged. Beautiful pictures, statues, and works of art adorn the 
 chambers, and the mental condition of the wife is much looked after 
 at this time. The story of Jacob and I^aban shows that the sur- 
 roundings of animals, as they conceive, were recognized as important 
 in ancient times. Jacob and Laban made a bargain that for certain 
 services Jacob was to receive the parti-colored animals of the flocks 
 and herds. Jacob then placed before the stronger animals at the 
 watering-places streaked stakes, so that these animals should con- 
 ceive among them. The story goes that he waxed rich by this 
 arrangement. The strong animals, owing to their environment, 
 produced a large proportion of parti-colored young. We suppose, 
 too, that the frequent resemblance that insects and animals bear to 
 their surroundings is not only a survival of the fittest and a result 
 of natural selection, but also a tendency of life in reproduction to 
 be impressed by the conditions under which conception takes place. 
 There is a general opinion that sudden frights, impressive events, 
 and, in general, unusual circumstances or sights experienced or seen 
 by pregnant women may influence the character or appearance of 
 the child in utero. This opinion has sufficient support to warrant 
 attention. The following is one of many cases that might be cited : 
 
 CIRCUMCISED BY A MATERNAL IMPRESSION. 
 
 Dr. John G. Harvey, of Blue Mound, 111., relates the following : "On 
 August II, 1884, I performed the operation of circumcision on a boy, three 
 years of age, for the relief of a nervous trouble. On March 31, 1885, just seven 
 months and twenty days later, his mother gave birth to a boy who was as per- 
 
The Child, 159 
 
 fectly circumcised as the child upon whom I had operated ; even the scars 
 from the sutures were reproduced in the exact numbers and location of those 
 on the organ of the boy upon whom I had operated." — Medical Record^ 
 Nov. 3, 1888. 
 
 PRE-NATAIv CIRCUMCISION. 
 
 To THE Editor of thb Medical Record. 
 
 Sir— In the Medical Record of November 3, 1888, page 535, I reported a 
 case of circumcision by maternal impression. 
 
 In the Medical Record, of December 15, 1888, Dr. M. G. Lowrey, of Boulder, 
 Col., thinks the case of so much importance to the profession that it should be 
 established beyond question. I therefore enclose the certificate of Dr. R. 
 Tobey, who assisted me in the operation and afterward attended the mother in 
 confinement. 
 
 I do not propose to account for the phenomenon on a scientific basis, but 
 
 can furnish the doctor and the professor with indisputable evidence as to 
 
 the facts. 
 
 J. G. Harvey, A.M., M.D. 
 
 Blue Mound, 111., February 10, 1889. 
 
 [Copy.] 
 
 I hereby certify that I assisted Dr. Harvey in circumcising the son of Mr. 
 
 S , as reported in the Medical Record of November 3, 1888, and that I 
 
 attended his mother in confinement on March 31, 1885, just seven months and 
 twenty days after the operation, at which time she was delivered of a male 
 child, which was perfectly circumcised, and presented exactly the appearance 
 of having been circumcised in the same manner as the boy previously operated 
 upon, even showing the marks of each suture. 
 
 R. Tobey, M.D. 
 
 Macon, 111., February 10, 1889. -— 
 
 I have been unable to find any similar record of pre-natal circum- 
 cision amongst the Jews. The long-established custom of the Jews 
 would doubtless tend to prevent the performance of circumcision 
 from so much affecting a Jewish mother. 
 
 If the extraordinary has such influence in one event, it is but 
 reasonable to suppose that the every-day and oft repeated events of a 
 mother's life must influence the life of the child. Some physicians 
 think that it is not so much some particular event that influences the 
 child in utero, as it is the mother's dwelling on the event, or dreading 
 its effect on the child, that is Hkely to influence it. A number of 
 cases have been collected to sustain this point. There can be little 
 doubt that maternal dread of an evil influence on a child in utero 
 would tend to produce the effect dreaded, or by the nervousness 
 induced lower the child's vitality. The mother, therefore, should be 
 informed of these tendencies. Some physicians deem influence of 
 
1 60 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 events in the mother's life to be without effect on the child in utero. 
 The weight of testimony and the general indications of nature in 
 evolution and development indicate some effects as being produced 
 by circumstances occurring during gestation. 
 
 As poor food for the body taken by the mother will weaken the 
 constitution of the child, so poor food for the mother's mind will be 
 likely to affect the capacities of her child, and so the probability 
 extends to all things entering into the mother's life. 
 
 Dr. Wm. Hunter, of Kngland, undertook a scientific examination 
 into the effects upon the child in utero of circumstances or shocks 
 occurring in the life of the mother. He questioned two thousand 
 mothers immediately after delivery as to influences that they could 
 think of as likely to affect the appearance of the child that occurred 
 during gestation. He then examined the child, and in no case found 
 any correspondence or connection in the condition of the child with 
 the circumstances related. He found marks where nothing gave 
 expectation of them, and found none where severe shocks and fright 
 had been experienced. 
 
 While this physician's testimony will not entirely overthrow other 
 contrary testimony, it must lend a color to the opinion that some of 
 the authenticated cases of birth-marks corresponding with maternal 
 impressions might be due to an accidental concatenation of circum- 
 stances rather than to a real impression upon the foetus through the 
 mother. At least, such extreme views as those of Mrs. Kirby and Mrs. 
 Farnham are not sustained. Were their views correct as to the over- 
 powering influence of the life and thought of the mother, while preg- 
 nant, upon the child, we should find it impossible to account for the 
 frequent preponderance of the father's physique and character in the 
 child except upon the hypothesis that the mother herself is continu- 
 ally impressed by the father. As the mother might be equally or 
 more impressed by other men, and as children are not observed to 
 resemble those about the mother in moral families, this hypothesis 
 will not help us to avoid the difiiculty. 
 
 Galton, in tracing out the parental influences upon eminent men, 
 finds that the father's is more often noticed in all pursuits except 
 that of the divine. In that occupation alone does the influence of 
 the mother preponderate. Galton' s figures are as follows : In 100 
 cases of judges, statesmen, commanders, men of literature or men of 
 science, 70 are found to derive their talent mainly from the father 
 and 30 mainly from the mother. In 100 poets, 94 will be found to 
 derive their talents mainly from the father and 6 only from the 
 mother. In 100 artists, 85 have their talents from the father and 
 15 from the mother. In 100 religious teachers these proportions 
 
The Child, i6i 
 
 are reversed, and the ratio is 73 to 27 in favor of the mother. In 
 musicians the talent comes very rarely through the female line, — in 
 the wonderful Bach family, for instance, not in a single instance. 
 Oalton's figures, however, are considered by him as more likely to 
 •err against the influence of the mother than for it on account of the 
 difiiculty of tracing the female line. He finds as the degrees of 
 relationship are removed that the female influence rapidly weakens, 
 perhaps largely due to the cause named. For instance, of kinships of 
 eminent men in the second degree he finds 41 through the male line 
 and 19 through the female ; in the third degree he finds 19 kin- 
 ships through the male and i only through the female. Galton 
 also calls attention to the fact that male qualities not visibly pos- 
 sessed by the mother may still be transmitted through her. 
 
 Dr. H. R. Storer states that hereditary insanity flows more com- 
 monly from the father than from the mother. A child with an 
 insane mother, therefore, is more apt to escape the taint than one 
 with an insane father. He states the same thing as true in regard to 
 liereditary alcoholism. 
 
 Fournier shows that there are numerous cases of women infected 
 through the foetus with syphilis ; the father being in the non-con- 
 tagious stages of the disease at the time of conception, and the 
 mother never having had the initial lesions. So also children have 
 l)een born with constitutional syphilis, though the mother had never 
 suffered from it, the disease coming from the father. Two cases 
 liave recently been reported from Scotland by Dr. Felkin, of Edin- 
 burgh, where the foetus suffered distinct intermittent malarial chills 
 in utero and where the infants were bom with enlarged spleens. In 
 the first case the child had seven chills after birth, but recovered. 
 In the second case the child had two chills, the first followed by 
 fever, temp. 102°; it died in the cold stage of the second attack, 
 twenty-four hours after the first. In neither case was the residence 
 malarious. In neither case had the mother ever had malaria. In 
 l)oth cases the husbands were suffering at the time of conception 
 with severe malaria contracted abroad. 
 
 On the other hand, according to Galton (natural inheritance), 
 consumption is nearly always inherited from the mother ; that is, a 
 child with a consumptive father has a good chance to escape the 
 malady, while the chance for a child with a consumptive mother to 
 escape is poor. It may in this case be reasonably supposed that the 
 almost inevitable intimacy of mother and child might infect the child 
 with the mother's disease after the birth of the child. 
 
 We cannot reconcile these results with a preponderating influence 
 of pre-natal surroundings or occurrences upon the mother. It is, 
 
1 62 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 however, certain that every circumstance in our Hves previous to the 
 creation of a child will, to some extent, influence that child, and we 
 may well suppose that circumstances immediately previous to con- 
 ception are more influential upon the child than remote occurrences 
 of equal importance. 
 
 It would seem upon the whole that circumstances of life in the 
 father and mother immediately previous to or at conception are those 
 most likely to impress the type of the offspring. In evolution it is 
 pretty well demonstrated that the parent has the power to impress 
 its progeny with a tendency to vary towards a harmony with sur- 
 rounding conditions. At any rate, we observe that the seed of 
 wheat grown in the north for several seasons will mature earlier 
 when planted in the south than seed from wheat grown in the 
 locality. So, also, the northern seed will stand frost the best. 
 Farmers avail themselves of these tendencies in seeds for their own 
 benefit. So, also, with trees having a wide range of habitat, we 
 observe that the seeds produced by individuals in the extremes of a 
 tree's range will give seedlings in each case better adapted to the 
 locality where produced, than the seed from the same kind of tree in 
 the other extreme of its habitat. The same thing will help us to 
 account for such comparatively rapid changes in man as that diver- 
 gence of type found in the American descendant of the English 
 Puritans. 
 
 Geoffroy Saint- Hilaire shows that monstrosities in the foetus are 
 recognizable very early in gestation. M. Dareste's investigations 
 confirm this fact, which indicates that monstrosities are probably 
 such from the very moment of fertilization. On the other hand, 
 Flourens produced red coloring in the bones of the foetus of a female 
 mammal by feeding madder, and Coste's experiments with salmon 
 trout showed that the eggs when placed in water where only the 
 white trout lived became pale and the fish lost their red color. 
 These facts indicate a great influence upon the still unborn by the 
 stUToundings of their gestation. We should, therefore, do all that 
 is reasonably possible to have the circumstances surrounding con- 
 ception and gestation of the most favorable kind. Healthy, beautiful, 
 moral, and improving surroundings are of great importance to the 
 parturient woman, for the conditions of life of the woman will, of 
 necessity, impress the child indirectly if not directly. It is not 
 demonstrated, as yet, that environment affects the foetus, still there is 
 sufficient ground for such an opinion to warrant the precautions 
 suggested. 
 
 Work is of great value to the child when performed by the 
 woman before its birth, therefore we may repeat the advice that a 
 
The Child. i6 
 
 o 
 
 wife should always have some useful occupation or occupations in 
 which she will be employed before conception, to gain the habit of 
 work, and to make it safe after conception, during which time she 
 will continue the work to secure an easy labor and prompt recovery. 
 The main object of this course is for the benefit of the child's physi- 
 cal and moral strength. Work prevents feelings of loneliness, dis- 
 content, and the abnormal development of passion. It is a great 
 safeguard to the woman, and cannot but be beneficial in its influence 
 upon the character and constitution of the conceived but unborn child. 
 
 Birth is the time from which, by a convenient convention, we date 
 the individual life of each human being. It is indeed an important 
 moment. The mother at this time should be in a sunny and well- 
 ventilated apartment and at home. No stationary drain pipe or wash 
 basin should be in the room. If it seems impossible to avoid this, 
 close any such breeding-place and highway of disease tightly, by 
 means of corks. Stationary wash-stands are ugly and dangerous. 
 The best 4)lumbing I have seen will not make them thoroughly safe. 
 Their dangers are out of sight and often odorless. Traps, which are 
 relied on, with pipe ventilation, to prevent sewer gas from coming 
 into the room, do not wholly shut it ofi"; and, besides, it requires 
 but a short length of pipe to produce gases, which, if not filled with 
 disease germs, still 'SO lower the general vitality of a person long 
 exposed to them as to render the individual less able to resist a 
 shock of nature or to overcome disease germs introduced in other 
 ways. The long and close confinement of mother and child after 
 labor causes the condition of the indoor air to be a matter of special 
 importance. 
 
 A quiet and reliable midwife should be employed. Great care 
 should be exercised in such a selection. In case the means of the 
 family render such professional aid impossible, a relative or friend 
 may be secured to help the mother. A good and experienced phy- 
 sician should be in attendance to render aid should nature seem 
 incapable of completing the task. 
 
 Anaesthetics are used a great deal in labor. How far the weak- 
 ness of civilized women may make this advisable it is difl&cult to say, 
 but a common-sense view points strongly to the propriety of a much 
 lessened use of this practice. Chloroform and its allies, from the 
 information at my command and as usually given— that is, before the 
 extreme pain of expulsion — lengthen labor, cause the pains to come 
 more slowly, increase the danger of post-partum hemorrhage, and 
 delay recovery. On the other hand, by their use the supreme pains 
 of delivery at the close of the third stage are passed in unconscious- 
 ness or semi-consciousness. The administration of chloroform in a 
 
1 64 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 judicious manner is not accompanied by danger ; only one death is 
 on reliable record of a woman in labor under the influence of chloro- 
 form. When, however, an excessive amount is given prematurely, 
 and say to the point of muscular relaxation, it may well be doubted 
 whether chloroform does not in a secondary way cause death to the 
 mother or to the child in numerous cases, although the death of the 
 mother does not take place under the influence of the anaesthetic. 
 
 Indirectly chloroform may advance the interests of the family by 
 encouraging women, otherwise too fearful of the labor pains, to bear 
 children. Anaesthetics in labor on many occasions are invaluable. 
 The use of these agents is probably now abused. The bad efiects of 
 chloroform arise largely from its use prematurely in labor. It should 
 in almost all cases be confined to the last and supreme pains which 
 expel the child. These it mitigates. In the primipara the perineum 
 is liable to laceration and especially so in the case of strong, athletic, 
 high- type women. 
 
 Chloroform properly applied is deemed a preventive of this. 
 Its action, if favorable, is probably accomplished by a general relaxa- 
 tion and by a diminution of the co-operation in expulsion of the 
 voluntary muscles. 
 
 This subject is worthy of careful study. The weight of medical 
 testimony is decidedly in favor of the use of chloroform at the proper 
 time in childbirth when indicated. The most phenomenally suc- 
 cessful obstetrician whose record I am acquainted with. Dr. Henry 
 Worthington of lyos Angeles, Cal. , never uses an anaesthetic when 
 he can avoid it. Chloroform should in no case be given by gaslight. 
 It combines with gas and forms an irrespirable vapor, C.O.CP. 
 A number of fatal results in general hospital practice have been 
 noted recently as due to this cause. It is well to have chloroform 
 together with forceps, scissors, catheter, thread to tie the severed 
 cord, etc. , ready at hand to use if required. 
 
 The occasional benefit of chloroform and similar drugs in labor 
 may have for its cause the simulation of death by certain of the 
 nerve centres. We know that in trees, plants, and animals there is 
 often noticed a desperate attempt at reproduction when by a wound 
 or otherwise death threatens ; and this too in spite of the fact that 
 the attempt to live on in a new generation hastens the death of the 
 individual. This is the philosophy of pruning fruit trees, and is at 
 the bottom of the extraordinary numbers of oranges and other fruits 
 frequently seen on trees wounded to death by gophers or by other 
 means. 
 
 Judging by analogy one would be justified in concluding that 
 any such disarrangement of nature's work in healthy human indi- 
 
The Child, 165 
 
 viduals could not generally be productive of good. For the advan- 
 tage of pruning is where the tree goes to wood, not to fruit, and the 
 wound awakens the dormant reproductive powers, or redundant 
 fruit is cut off to allow a greater perfection to what is left. Some 
 procedure of this kind might be appropriate with the sterile man or 
 woman, but it could be of no advantage to the woman fertilized and 
 carrying one child. 
 
 Anaesthetics in general practice are dangerous in heart troubles, 
 kidney complications, and to some nervous conditions. They occa- 
 sionally produce effects opposite to those expected. Chloroform is 
 the best agent to produce unconsciousness in labor and is most com- 
 monly used ; but ether is deemed the safest of the anaesthetics. 
 While this drug is not often used in labor, something may be said 
 about its effects now that anaesthetics are under discussion. 
 
 Dr. Robert F. Weir has recently shown from the records of the 
 New York Hospital that there is one death under ether in two thou- 
 sand cases. This is not considerable, but this agent, like its con- 
 geners, adds to the shock of an operation, and, it must be presumed, 
 prevents recoveries that would have been secure without its use. It 
 may be said here that the method of inducing etherization should be 
 gentle and gradual ; ten minutes will complete the work. 
 
 The sudden or drenching method is not productive of the best 
 results. Ether is much more dangerous in kidney troubles than 
 chloroform. It is also inflammable, having been known to ignite 
 fifteen feet from a flame. 
 
 The clover inhaler does away with many of the drawbacks of 
 ether. Its advantages may be summarized by saying that it reduces 
 the time required for producing anaesthesia to from one to two min- 
 utes ; when properly used does away with struggling and uncon- 
 scious resistance of the patient, prevents the dangerous chill to the 
 air passages unavoidable in the old methods, and consequently 
 obviates the old bronchial irritations which were sometimes fatal. 
 The advantages of this inhaler are so great that it is indeed strange 
 that it has not come into general use. 
 
 The most recent formalization of the use of anaesthetics in surgery 
 is the following : 
 
 Dr. Kocher has been led by his researches upon the comparative advan- 
 tages of ether and chloroform to formulate the following conclusions : i. Be- 
 fore proceeding to general anaesthesia, it is indispensable to examine the 
 patient thoroughly and submit him to preliminary treatment. 2. It is useful, 
 and even necessary in many patients, to stimulate the heart's activity by the 
 administration of alcohol or other stimulant (tea) before proceeding to anaes- 
 thesia. 3. The patient should be put to sleep only when in the horizontal 
 
1 66 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 position. 4. When the subject has not been properly prepared beforehand, 
 chloroform should never be employed. 5. When the subject is affected with 
 heart disease, or with any functional cardiac affection with accompanying im- 
 plication on the part of the respiratory organs, ether should be preferred to 
 chloroform. 6. The opposite course is necessary when an affection of the 
 respiratory tract is present with hyperaemia of the tracheo-bronchial mucous 
 membrane. 7. When the anaesthetic sleep is to be prolonged for a relatively 
 long period, chloroform should be used first and then ether administered in 
 small quantities to keep up the anaesthesia. 8. Chloroform should never be 
 given mixed with a large proportion of air ; during the whole duration of 
 anaesthesia fresh air should, however, be admitted freely to the respiratory 
 passages of the subject. 9. For long operations, or for one reason or another, 
 the use of ether seems to be contra-indicated, a preliminary injection of mor- 
 phine or morphine and atropine should be made, so as to restrict as much as 
 possible the quantity of chloroform necessary to secure anaesthesia of suffi- 
 ciently long duration. — Gazette Mkdicale de Paris, October 17, 1891. 
 
 The after-effects of ether, the safest of the anaesthetics, are often 
 one or more of the following : inflammation of the bronchial tubes, 
 headache, suppression of urine, choreic symptoms, and temporary 
 insanity. One case is on record of a patient who remained insane 
 after etherization for four days. Sometimes nervous symptoms com- 
 mencing immediately after taking ether persist through life. When 
 we consider that recovery is retarded and that more or less discom- 
 fort generally, and actual danger frequently, is the result of the use 
 of even the safest anaesthetics, it may not seem unreasonable to lay 
 down the following rule for the application of these agents : 
 
 The security of the surgeon in completing an operation doubtful 
 if the patient could move or resist ; the security of the surgeon in 
 doing the work thoroughly ; the security of the patient against 
 injury or failure through his own incapacity to control his muscles, 
 especially the voluntary. These are the certain indications for 
 anaesthetics physically, Policy will induce us to use them at times 
 when they are not physically necessary. The most sensititve 
 nerves are on the surface in man. The interior of the body is but 
 slightly sensitive and it is probable that in actual suffering there is 
 less saved by the use of anaesthetics than they cause. 
 
 It must of course be understood that in many surgical operations 
 the involuntary contraction of the muscles would prevent success 
 were the patient conscious; consequently in -such cases the anaes- 
 thetic is absolutely essential. 
 
 Prof. T. G. Thomas says that labor is, as a rule, and in a great 
 majority of cases, a normal physiological process and requires no 
 treatment whatever by drugs. The most rapid increase of popula- 
 tion by birth-rate alone has always been in country districts, and 
 
The Child, iby 
 
 especially in pioneer communities such as those founded by the 
 early settlers of North America of both English and French stock. 
 In those early times little indeed was known of gynecology or ob- 
 stetrics, and such knowledge as existed was unavailable for the 
 ^ekt mass of mothers. 
 
 Such well authenticated cases of mothers passing through labor 
 with safety to themselves and to their children without the new 
 knowledge as our first settlements offer, and the failure of the medi- 
 cal men to make any radical improvement in the death-rate per birth 
 outside of maternity hospitals, show that much of the present 
 method may be superfluous if not positively harmful. 
 
 The ^6^k Registration Report of Massachusetts {i^S'j) shows the 
 :general death-rate of the population without special epidemics to have 
 been 20.28 in 1,000. This is higher than it was in the previous 
 twelve years, and higher than between 1850 and 1862. This indi- 
 cates a sanitary retrogression instead of advance, and incidentally 
 sustains the point on death-rate of women in delivery. 
 
 The population of Massachusetts, however, is now more crowded 
 and lives under much changed conditions probably less favorable to 
 health, and it must also be remarked that the birth-rate of the State 
 has decreased with the increased death-rate. These facts also inci- 
 dentally show that the avoidance of childbirth diminishes the 
 prospect of life. 
 
 Certain drugs have at times and in particular cases been found 
 advantageous in labor. From such cases the formalism and devo- 
 tion to tradition that more or less creep into every trade and pro- 
 fession have propagated and made general the use of these drugs 
 and procedures. There can be little doubt that amongst many phy- 
 sicians this mechanical and blind traditional treatment of labor is 
 not unusual. 
 
 I have been present at but a small number of labors, but what I 
 have seen strongly prejudices me against anaesthetics. In my limi- 
 ted experience with anaesthetics the labor appeared to be delayed, 
 the child's life proportionately endangered, subsequent hemorrhage 
 in mother made more probable, and the mother generally left after 
 the labor in a condition of half sickness which I have known to last 
 for a considerable time. On the whole I am opposed to these agents 
 and as far as labor is concerned advise avoiding them. 
 
 The agent of an anatomical manikin of considerable merit, Dr. 
 Henry F. Frisius, who in the course of his business has visited a 
 vast number of physicians, tells me that only about one in a hundred 
 of these retain more than a smattering of anatomy and physiology. 
 This gentleman is a good anatomist himself and a very intelligent 
 
1 68 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 man. We may reasonably surmise from this information that a 
 great number of physicians are equally ignorant upon other vital 
 matters. Consequently it is not at all out of the way to give some 
 hints on medical subjects. 
 
 Such a drug as ergot does probably more harm than good in. 
 labor cases. Its exhibition to induce labor or expedite delivery is 
 harmful. Under its action still-births increase in ratio, and tearing 
 and injuring of the parts under the violent and irregular pains it 
 causes are common. Its use in labor is to prevent or stop post- 
 partum bleeding. In this case its spasmodic action probably expels 
 blood clots from the uterus, and may induce beneficial contraction of 
 that organ. Thomas, King, lyusk, and Playfair recommend its use 
 after the birth of the placenta. 
 
 Besides the mistakes so common in the administration of drugs, 
 those who rely on them must contend against their extraordinary 
 variability in strength as at present sold. Not long ago a com- 
 mittee of the New York State Pharamaceutical Society examined 
 the drugs in a great number of country drug-stores with the follow- 
 ing results : 
 
 Spirit of nitre varied in strength from 134 to zero. 76 samples of 
 dilute acetic acid showed 11 too strong, 19 fair, and 34 very weak. 
 The strength should have been 6.12 per cent., but the samples varied 
 from 0.8 to 29.8. Of 46 specimens of Hoffman's anodyne only 5 
 were good, etc., etc. 
 
 When labor is delayed a much better practice than the use of 
 drugs is to encourage indolent nature by such simple and innocent 
 means as changing the woman's position, manipulation, and oc- 
 casionally by manual dilation of the os uteri, etc. Nothing, however, 
 should be introduced into the generative tract without thorough, 
 antiseptic precautions, and only in clear necessity. 
 
 Dr. Geo. J. Kngelmann in his Labor among Primitive People^ 
 shows that nearly every possible position is taken by women in labor 
 amongst such people. Standing up, lying down, kneeling, squatting, 
 tied up, pulling on a rope or stick, on the belly, on the back, half 
 recumbent, pushing with the feet against a wall, being held around 
 the thorax by an assistant, ditto with downward pressure on the 
 uterus by the arms of the assistant, hanging of the woman upon the 
 neck of an assistant, etc., etc. Engelmann's investigations show 
 that there is no natural position for the woman in labor. This has 
 also been demonstrated by several German physicians by placing 
 primiparae in labor alone in rooms, with freedom to do as they liked, 
 and no information as to what to do. Several hundred such experi- 
 ments gave negative results. We may, therefore, feel sure that a 
 
The Child, 169 
 
 change of position can do no harm, while it is strongly probable 
 that this work of nature is facilitated by movement. 
 
 In post-partum hemorrhage, water heated to the point of toler- 
 ance may be used to irrigate the uterus with benefit. Such water 
 should be boiled before use so as to sterilize it. 
 
 The bowels and bladder should be emptied before the child is 
 bom. This is the first thing when labor commences. 
 
 Dr. M. ly. Holbrook has published an interesting small book en- 
 titled Parturition without Pain. If it be correct, then anaesthetics 
 may be banished from every birth. Its chief object is to show 
 that an easy and practically painless delivery may be obtained by a 
 certain course of diet. The main points in this diet are the eating of 
 large amounts of fruit, especially of the acid kinds, and the avoidance 
 of food containing considerable earthy salts. What he advises 
 against are, table-salt, wheaten bread, and all preparations of wheat, 
 pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, coffee, cocoa, Turkey rhu- 
 barb, liquorice, lentils, cinchona or Peruvian bark, cascarilla, sarsa- 
 parilla, and gentian. The best forms of farinaceous food are sago, 
 tapioca, and rice. For drinking, only rain water or distilled water 
 should be used. The theory of all this is, that if the earthy salts be 
 withheld from the mother's diet, the bones of the child will be less 
 fully formed, consequently softer, and that, therefore, the birth will 
 be easier on account of the compressibility of the child. His proof 
 is in citing Indian and Hindoo women and a number of special cases. 
 In some of these the child was born when the mother was asleep, or 
 standing on the floor, thus indicating an absence of preparatory pain. 
 Pain and trouble were at a minimum in all his instances. Were it 
 a patent medicine which he recommended, I should say that the 
 proof was too incomplete to merit attention. Cases of sudden and 
 painless birth come frequently under the observation of every ex- 
 perienced obstetrician without any special dietary regimen having 
 been followed. 
 
 However, this system is simple and deserves a trial where a 
 previous labor has been difficult or painful. 
 
 The pains of women in childbirth have a very excellent reason 
 for at least a moderate existence. The human child in civilized 
 communities require a great deal of care at the time of its birth. To 
 have a child bom while walking far from home, in a carriage, in the 
 streets, or without due notice, would be very inconvenient in all cases, 
 and very dangerous in most. It is not every woman who can be 
 delivered of a child through the water-closet of a moving train, stop 
 the train, and pick the child up alive as a railroad conductor's wife is 
 recently said to have done. The pains are not only a warning but 
 
170 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 a positive command of nature to make ready, to bring in assistance, 
 and to be so located as to make the child's appearance safe. When 
 we reflect upon the necessities of reproduction and upon the careless- 
 ness and folly of mankind in this their greatest duty, we may per- 
 ceive that the pains of labor are a great safeguard to the race. 
 Without them, child-death and child-murder at full term would be 
 much more prevalent than at present. The average duration of 
 labor in civilized women is in primiparae seventeen hours, and in 
 multiparae twelve hours ; but exceptions are so numerous as to 
 render a knowledge of this average of little importance. 
 
 The tendency of to-day appears to be too much interference with 
 this supreme work of nature in reproduction. However, as develop- 
 ment is complex so is the difficulty of reproduction increased, and as 
 civilization increases so does the difficulty of childbirth seem to 
 increase with it. 
 
 In civilization it is at least certain that marriages take place later 
 in life than amongst barbarians, and the proportion of lateness 
 doubtless bears a close relation to the degree of civilization. I^abor 
 and childbirth must consequently come later in the life of the women 
 in more civilized countries than in less civilized ones. It is equally 
 certain that childbirth becomes progressively more difficult in 
 primiparae every year after twenty. 
 
 After twenty-seven the increased difficulty of women with first 
 births becomes very noticeable. As the parts, muscles, and bones 
 become more rigid, the difficulty augments. Abnormal presenta- 
 tions are more frequent ; the proportion of still-births increases and 
 the children born are more likely to be deformed in body or to be 
 deficient in mind with every year the first birth is delayed, certainly 
 after twenty-five years of age in women. 
 
 I^aceration of the perineum occurs more frequently also. When- 
 ever this accident happens the lacerated surfaces should be sewed 
 well and firmly together at once. The physician should never wait 
 until the parts swell. After the se wing-up the knees must be kept 
 tied together for from eight to ten days. Some doctors practise the 
 Goodell system of retarding the birth of the head to save the peri- 
 neum. A general adoption of this practice by the young physicians 
 in a New York hospital increased largely the proportion of still- 
 births. 
 
 Under the management of a skilled and experienced physician 
 this system probably does good, but unless you have a man in whom 
 you absolutely know you have such a physician, it will be best to 
 condemn this procedure. 
 
 A manual dilatation of the vulva and stretching of the perineum 
 
The Child. 171 
 
 when carefully performed from the commencement of labor dimin- 
 ishes the chance of tearing of the perineum. Its effect is upon the 
 same principle as that seen in the dilatation of the rectum for surgical 
 work. By gradual and careful dilatation of the rectum it may be so 
 stretched that the hand and arm of the surgeon may be intrcduced 
 into it without injury. The same gradual dilatation of the urethra 
 enables surgeons to introduce without injury large instruments into 
 the bladder for crushing stones formed there. 
 
 Accidents also occasionally occur to the cervix or other parts of 
 the generative organs in labor. Such cases should be treated at an 
 early subsequent period. Much suffering is thus prevented, and a 
 prolonged and sometimes permanent sterility is avoided. Many 
 women injured in childbirth live for years as semi-invalids, incapable 
 of full life action, when they could just as well as not have been 
 happy and complete wives, full of health for themselves and joy for 
 their husbands. In most cases of this kind a short surgical opera- 
 tion would have cured them and opened their lives to happiness. 
 Thus it may be seen that the meddlesome obstetrician may be a 
 necessity. A first-class physician, the best you can get, should 
 always be employed to superintend labor and childbirth, to be at 
 hand in case operative interference be required, and to examine the 
 mother afterward. A physician, by timely knowledge, may save a 
 mother and child that otherwise would die through loss of time. 
 He may promptly sew up a tear that without action might occasion 
 long suffering. 
 
 The modesty of the mother should be protected as much as 
 possible, and no persons should be introduced into the apartment 
 except those absolutely required. 
 
 People and lights vitiate the air of closed rooms and should in 
 these supreme moments never be allowed in excess of what is abso- 
 lutely necessary. 
 
 In the royal families of Europe a different policy is followed. 
 The members of the family and the principal officers of state must 
 attend the birth of every royal child. The object is to secure the 
 certainty that the heir to the throne has actually arrived by the 
 proper and legitimate channel. In France, to the second child of 
 Marie Antoinette, this custom was extended to admit the general 
 public to view the birth and to thus carry assurance to the masses, 
 at least as to the maternity of the princess. The crowd that roughly 
 rushed into the chambers of this Queen, and even climbed on to the 
 furniture to view the delivery of her first child, very nearly caused 
 her death. Subsequently the family and principal officers were 
 deemed sufficient, and the rabble was excluded. 
 
172 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 The Mormons in this county have some curious customs about 
 the delivery of the child. Four elders are expected to be present, but 
 neither they nor any one else may render assistance to the woman. 
 The idea seems to be that if God wishes her to breed He will carr>' her 
 through, and if not she must die and be exterminated. This custom 
 changes from the curious to the cruel when complications arise. On 
 the other hand, the inquiries made by me in Utah show a very low 
 death-rate in delivery, and indicate that the dangers that may be 
 overcome by timely interference are more than neutralized by the 
 dangers created by unnecessary meddling. As to the sj'Stem of 
 delivery and the presence of the elders at births, it is, I confess, all 
 upon untrustworthy evidence. 
 
 If the husband be a man of nerve he should be present and should 
 have beforehand studied as much as possible in obstetrics so as to 
 know what ought to be done and what ought to be left alone. He 
 should observe great discretion in the use of such information ; the 
 emplo3^ment of a new doctor in case of bad management is its best 
 application. Nature ought to do this work, and, if the woman's life 
 has been healthy, in the vast majority of cases it will doit. If the 
 woman's life has been artificial and without healthy occupation, or if 
 she be weak and sickly, trouble is more likely to occur. The history 
 of labors in a woman's family, and the history of her own labors, if 
 she be a multipara, are always of value. They may enable 3^ou to 
 guard against peculiarities that would not otherwise be thought of. 
 
 The greatest danger in labor is from infection and septic poison- 
 ing. To guard against this, neither nurse nor doctor should be 
 employed who has had within a considerable period cases of puerperal 
 fever. Both nurse and doctor should be required to wash their hands 
 in antiseptic fluid before going into the labor or to the woman pend- 
 ing her recovery. A basin of antiseptic w^ater, renewed frequently, 
 should be kept for this purpose. A good preparation for this object 
 is one part of bichloride of mercury to one thousand of water. This 
 destroys the life of any bacteria after an exposure of 45 seconds. 
 Superficial washing of hands or instruments is not sufiicient. The 
 instruments should be soaked in the antiseptic fluid. 
 
 Doctors are often touchy about advice in such matters, and it 
 may be well to exhibit this rule to them in the family book rather 
 than to tell it with explanations. A doctor that requires cleansing, 
 it must be said, is a pretty poor customer to deal with, but no pre- 
 caution of so simple a character should be avoided where so much is 
 at stake. The life of a true wife, of a mother who has immortalized 
 you and kindled anew the fires of your youth, commands your every 
 solicitude and care. 
 
The Child. 173 
 
 Septic poisoning in new mothers arises from two causes : the first 
 cause being contagion, the second being from imperfect contraction 
 of the uterus and the consequent absorption through its unclosed 
 sinuses of the decomposed contents of this organ, blood clots, etc. 
 The defective contraction of the uterus is generally due to a pro- 
 longed second stage of labor. The first stage may be long without 
 harm, but after the presenting part has passed the cervix, the child 
 should be born within an hour and a half, and if it is not bom within 
 three hours of the second stage instrumental interference is strongly 
 indicated. The skilful physician can ascertain by the heart-beats 
 of the unborn child, and by other signs, the time when delay would 
 no longer be safe for the mother or the child. For more exact infor- 
 mation you should study a work on obstetrics. 
 
 Some figures recently published by Dr. Down indicate at once the 
 importance and the danger of instrumental interference in delayed 
 labors. 
 
 Dr. Down says that of idiots bom, 9 per cent, are due to instru- 
 mental interference, and 20 per cent, to delays in birth. One of the 
 best practices I have seen in unduly delayed labors is a manual 
 dilatation of the cervix. This hastens the labor and the dangers of 
 injury to mother and child are at a minimum. 
 
 Antiseptics or drugs fatal to germ life are numerous. Two or 
 more of these should not be used together without a full test of their 
 action after combination. Many drugs fatal to germs when alone, 
 lose much of their force when combined with other drugs also fatal 
 to germs without mixture. Even soap should not be used with 
 antiseptics, as it prevents the complete action of several such drugs. 
 All secretions of the sick should be disinfected at once and before 
 they are thrown out. 
 
 No nurse with syphilis, consumption, cancer, or any contagious 
 disease should be employed upon any terms. Such diseases are 
 communicable and might be given to the mother or to the child. It 
 is not certain whether cancer is communicable. Recent experiments 
 in Germany show that it may be inoculated. Dr. Hahn of Berlin 
 experimented with a woman admitted to the hospital for recurrent 
 cancer of the left breast. He transplanted some of the cancerous 
 skin to the right breast. A microscopical examination after death 
 showed that a cancerous growth had taken place where the inocula- 
 tion had been made. Alibert derided the theory of cancer contagion. • 
 He inoculated himself with the juice of a cancer and died shortly 
 after of carcinoma. Hanan of Zurich has recently transferred carci- 
 noma from one rat to two others. If cancer be not contagious a 
 child's vitality would be lowered by contact with it. 
 
1 74 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 Cleanliness is the shibboleth of the lying-in room. Every pre- 
 caution should be taken on this head. Soiled linen, excrementory 
 matter, and all slops should be promptly removed. There is a super- 
 stition, based upon the necessity of keeping the mother quiet for 
 some time after childbirth, that the sheets should not be changed for 
 a certain period after the event. The sheets can be removed without 
 any injurious disturbance to the woman, and should be removed at 
 once and changed frequently. It is dangerous to have soiled sheets 
 under a woman at this time. 
 
 The mammary glands and nipples of the woman about to become 
 a mother require careful attention. This is especially the case before 
 the first confinement. Some time before confinement, the nipples 
 should be manipulated gently and rubbed twice a day with brandy 
 to which a little alum has been added. Where the nipples are sunken, 
 nipple shields with openings should be worn. White rubber should 
 never be used. Proper care at this time will make the nipples hard, 
 prevent cracking, and allow the mother the full delights of suckling 
 without pain. 
 
 Where fi-om malformation in the mother, excessive size of the 
 foetus, or from any cause the birth is impossible through the natural 
 channels, there are two methods used, embryotomy and the destruc- 
 tion of the child being one, and^ csesarian section being the other ; 
 this latter by making an incision into the uterus from the exterior, 
 and thus extracting the child. By this means the child may be 
 saved. The objection to this procedure has been the supposed in- 
 creased danger to the mother. The recent improvements in surgery 
 and antisepsis show that this is not now to be feared. The operation 
 of destroying the child now has no better statistics for the mother 
 than has caesarian section. Hertsch has performed caesarian section 
 seven times without a death, and of Cameron's ten cases but one died. 
 On the other hand, the European figures on embryotomy show a death- 
 rate varying from 5>^ per cent, to 45 per cent. I am decidedly in 
 favor of the operation to save both lives. Another operation has 
 recently come into fashion. This is called symphysiotomy. The 
 operation consists in cutting through the symphysis and so enlarging 
 the opening for delivery. It is a good operation in certain cases, and 
 is more easily performed than caesarian section. 
 
 The eyes, mouth, and nose of the new-born child should be 
 promptly sponged clean with lukewarm water. The importance of this 
 may be realized when we learn that 27.50 per cent, of diseases of the 
 eye are contagious, and of these 1.69 per cent, are due to conjunctiva 
 neonatorum contracted at birth. The percentage is not large, but 
 it may as well be guarded against at so small a cost. 
 
The Child. 
 
 175 
 
 After labor the bowels of the mother should be moved, if nature 
 is indolent, after the third day. lyaxatives in such case should be 
 given, and, if necessary, be aided by injections. An enema should 
 be taken early in labor if no natural evacuation has occurred. 
 
 The child should not be generally exhibited to friends or kissed by 
 any one except the mother. Frequently a child when bom does not 
 breathe. Prompt action is required in such case. The nose and 
 mouth should be rapidly sponged, a dash of cold water on the spine 
 may help, the arms should be moved to expand the chest, a breath 
 may be forced by the operator into the child's lungs, or the mucus 
 sucked from its throat. One excellent method is to hold the child's 
 head downward by one leg for a few moments. These, and a num- 
 ber of other, procedures bring on the breathing by reflex action. 
 When these methods fail, the system of artificial respiration practised 
 by Dr. W. E. Forrest should be immediately commenced. As long 
 as the ear, not the hand, can detect heart action in the foetus there 
 is hope, and the efforts to save should not be relaxed. Forrest's 
 method, in his own words, is as follows : 
 
 ** When it is evident that the asphyxia is so profound that reflex irritation 
 will not remove it, and that artificial respiration is necessary, the child is first 
 laid for a moment on its face, head a little lower than the pelvis, and pressure 
 is made upon its back to expel any fluids that may have been drawn into the 
 mouth and trachea. Then the child is placed in a sitting position in a common 
 wooden pail, half full of hot water, so that the water comes up to or just above 
 the child's heart. The operator's left hand grasps the child's wrists or hands, 
 the child's palms being to the front, so that when its arms are raised they will 
 be rotated outward. The operator's right hand supports the child's back across 
 the shoulders, with the child's head fallen back and resting in the crotch between 
 the thumb and finger of this hand. 
 
 ''The infant being in position, the first movement is that for getting air 
 into the lungs. The child's arms are carried steadily upward and a little back- 
 ward by the operator's left hand, until the weight of the body comes upon the 
 shoulders, the back steadied by the operator's right hand, the head supported 
 between the thumb and forefinger. In this position the child's arms are drawn 
 up and rotated outward, and the muscles extending from shoulders to ribs made 
 tense. Thus the ribs are raised. As the child is in the sitting posture the 
 abdominal muscles are relaxed, and thus do not tend to prevent the raising of 
 the ribs, as is done in the Sylvester and Schultz methods. In the latter methods 
 one force tends to counteract the other. This is avoided in the method here 
 given. 
 
 ** Having enlarged the thoracic diameters to the fullest extent by raising the 
 ribs, or rather, made it possible for them to be enlarged, we next proceed to 
 force air directly into the lungs. When the ribs are raised the child's head 
 extends sharply backward. This throws the cervical vertebrae forward and 
 draws the larynx backward. Thus the flaccid oesophagus becomes compressed 
 between the bones of the vertebrae on one side and the firm cartilaginous larynx 
 
176 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 on the other ; as a consequence, the oesophagus is effectually closed and the 
 air cannot be forced into the stomach, and must enter the lungs. This effect- 
 ually disposes of the time-worn and false statement that mouth-to-mouth insuf- 
 flation must force the air into the stomach instead of the lungs. This position of 
 the head also draws the tongue and epiglottis forward far better than it can be 
 done with the forceps, and there is no possible chance for the tongue to fall 
 back and close the larynx. We have now an open passage-way through the 
 mouth and larynx to the lungs, and there is no necessity of inserting the 
 catheter. 
 
 "The next step is to force air into the lungs. The arms still held up, the 
 operator bends forward, and taking in a breath as he does so, places his mouth 
 over that of the child and blows the air directly into the lungs. 
 
 " The air must and does enter the lungs and distend the collapsed air-cells, 
 as can be determined by the fact that it can be heard lea\dng the lungs at the 
 next step in this method. No great force need be used in doing this, although 
 there is but little danger of injuring the air-cells, however great the force. It will 
 be noticed that a safety escape is provided in this method for excess of air. The 
 nose should be, and is, pervdous, and any excess pours out through that aper- 
 ture, thus relieving the pressure on the lungs. This completes the movement 
 for introducing air into the lungs. 
 
 "Expiration is brought about by doubling the child's body forward upon it- 
 self so as to crowd the abdominal organs against the diaphragm ; at the same 
 time the arms are lowered to the side, and the operator's left hand, still retain- 
 ing the hands of the child, is brought against the front of the child's thorax, 
 and then gently and steadily presses the ribs and sternum downward and back- 
 ward. Thus every requisite is provided for forcing the air out of the lungs : 
 the diaphragm is pushed up, the abdominal muscles are relaxed, the shoulders 
 are lowered, and the thorax is compressed between the operator's hands, one 
 on the child's back, the other across the front of the thorax. After a dozen or 
 fifteen complete movements, when a sufficient number of the collapsed air- 
 cells have been distended, one can hear the air rush out of the lungs when the 
 pressure is made upon the thorax by the operator's hands. This completes the 
 movement for expiration. Again the hands are carried upward and backward, 
 the child's body is just raised off the bottom of the pail, so that the weight of 
 the body is on the arms alone, the head falls back, air is again blown into the 
 lungs. 
 
 " Now as to the philosophy of the method. It will be noticed that during the 
 whole of the process mueh of the child's body is in the warm bath. This I 
 conceive to be of great importance, and it is something that has not been 
 applied, so far as known, in any other method. 
 
 ** The important thing in attempts at resuscitation in a bad case of asphjrxia 
 in the new-bom babe is to keep the child's heart acting. It is easy enough to 
 supply air artificially to the lungs for the oxygenation of the blood, but unless 
 the heart sends the blood to the lungs, and then on through the tissues of the 
 body, the oxygen put into the lungs is useless. Now, if the child's skin is 
 allowed to get cold the blood in the capillaries ceases to move, and the effect 
 is soon manifested on the feebly beating heart. If the blood leaves the capil- 
 laries cooled it enters the veins at a low temperature and thus chills the heart 
 itself. Again, the heart lies near the surface of the body, and in a half-hour 
 may be directly chilled through the loss of heat from the surface of the body. 
 
The Child, 
 
 ^77 
 
 ** On the other hand, if the body is kept in a bath with a temperature of 
 from 105° to 110° F,, the capillaries are dilated, the blood can circulate freely, 
 and heated blood may be carried to the heart. It is claimed by physiologists 
 that when the circulation is active the whole mass of blood in the body passes 
 through the capillaries of the skin in a few minutes. Now, if the body is in a 
 warm bath the whole mass of blood has its temperature raised, and thus the 
 muscles themselves soon become heated. Any one can demonstrate the fact 
 on themselves by getting into a hot bath up to the neck. The thermometer 
 in the mouth will soon show a rise of two to three degrees Fahrenheit. M. 
 Morey's experiments proved conclusively that muscular tissue loses its con- 
 tractility when its temperature is lowered, and regains it when the temperature 
 of the muscles is raised up to a certain point. It has been ascertained that the 
 maximum aptitude for contraction is exhibited by human muscles at about 
 40° C. = 104° F. This is about the temperature of the body of a healthy adult 
 ■when immersed for some time in a bath at the temperature of 110° F, 
 
 "The heart is a muscular organ, obeying all the laws of muscular action, 
 and it seems evident that in an asphyxiated infant it will act with more force 
 if the infant's body temperature is raised and kept at 102° to 103° F., than if it 
 is lowered to 96° to 94° F., as it will be if the skin is exposed to the air for a 
 short time. 
 
 " Theory and practice both prove that the continued warm bath is a most 
 important measure in the resuscitation of badly asphyxiated infants. The 
 importance of having the child in a sitting posture during the respiratory move- 
 ments has already been commented on. 
 
 " In comparing the method here given with the best three methods hereto- 
 fore used, namely, Sylvester's, Schultz's, and the catheter in the larynx, it will 
 be seen that this combines all the advantages of the three usual methods with- 
 out any of their drawbacks. For instance, in the new method, we have direct 
 insufflation of air from the operator's lungs, as when the catheter is employed. 
 We have exactly the same method of raising the ribs and sternum as in the 
 Sylvester method, with the additional advantage of having the abdominal 
 muscles relaxed. We have in the new method the descent of the diaphragm 
 that is claimed as an advantage in the Schultz method. We have in expiration 
 the same doubling of the child's body forward and pushing up of the diaphragm 
 as are found in the Schultz and Schroeder methods. We avoid shock and 
 exposure that are so often fatal in the Schultz method, and, at the same time, 
 keep up the vital or animal heat in the infant during, perhaps, a long 
 operation. 
 
 "In recapitulation it may be said that the steps in the new method of 
 artificial respiration in bad cases of asphyxia in the new-born are as follows : 
 
 '* I. Lay the child on its face for an instant with the head and thorax lower 
 than the pelvis, and make quick but not violent pressure on the child's back. 
 This is done to expel any fluids that may have been drawn into the child's 
 mouth while passing through the pelvic canal. 
 
 ** 2. Place the child in the sitting posture in a pail or tub containing six to 
 eight inches of water as hot as can be borne comfortably by the operator's hand. 
 The child is supported in this position by one of the operator's hands across 
 the child's back, the child's head bent back and resting in the crotch between 
 the thumb and forefinger of this hand. The child's hands with the palms to 
 the front are held in the other hand of the operator. 
 
17^ The Conquest of Death, 
 
 " 3. The child's hands are carried upward until the child is suspended by 
 the arms, the buttocks just raised from the bottom of the pail. The child's 
 head now falls back, and the operator leans forward, and, mouth to mouthy 
 blows into the child's lungs. 
 
 "4. The child's arms are then lowered until the hand of the operator 
 holding them rests across the front of the child's thorax. Then the body of 
 the child is doubled forward, and, at the same time, its thorax is compressed 
 between the operator's hands, one in front, the other behind. This expels the 
 air from the lungs and completes the movements. 
 
 **Case I. — In March, 1890, I was called by an Italian midwife to assist her 
 in the delivery.of a child. The mother I found to be a stout, healthy primi- 
 para, aged twenty-one. The waters had come away forty-eight hours before I 
 was summoned and there had been labor pains ever since, but no progress had 
 been made. On examination, I found the os only one fourth dilated, the lips 
 thick and firm, the pelvic roof but little retracted, and the vaginal canal wholly 
 unfitted for the passage of a foetal head. 
 
 " I decided to wait a few hours ; the patient meantime to receive hot rectal 
 douches. Six hours later I was called again. I^ittle if any change, except 
 that the soft parts were more relaxed. The position of the head was face 
 anterior. 
 
 ** Taking into consideration the conditions of the case, i.e., the position of 
 the head, the early discharge of the waters, the leathery condition of the soft 
 parts, the large size of the child's head, and the fact that the mother was a fat, 
 plethoric young woman, I felt sure that I had a tiresome task before me. Need- 
 less to say that I was not disappointed. The forceps were applied, and it took 
 three hours of almost continuous traction of the strongest kind to deliver the 
 child. The child's head did not rotate, and in spite of every care during 
 delivery, the mother was badly lacerated, down to, but not into, the rectum. 
 The child was apparently dead, no pulsation of the cord, and not the slightest 
 pulsation of the heart could be felt by the hand. The midwife attended to the 
 delivery of the placenta, while I gave all my attention to the attempt to resus- 
 citate the child. There was no pulsation of the heart that could be felt by 
 placing my hand over the child's prsecordial region ; but on putting my ear ta 
 this region I could very distinctly hear the heart beating at the rate of about 
 sixty beats per minute. 
 
 " Let me say here that in my opinion the practitioner should never trust to 
 his hand to determine whether or not the new-born child's heart beats. It is 
 really startling to put one's ear to a child's chest where the hand can feel no 
 pulsation, and then hear with such distinctness the dull thud, thud, of the 
 child's heart. Dependence should always be placed on the ear instead of the 
 hand in determining whether or not an infant's heart has ceased to beat. 
 
 " In attempting to resuscitate this child I employed for a minute or two the 
 usual slapping with the hand, rubbing with brandy, dipping into hot and then 
 into cold water, but all to no purpose. The case was beyond the effect of reflex 
 irritation. 
 
 " The method of artificial respiration mentioned above was then employed. 
 That it caused air to enter and leave the lungs could be determined by the blue 
 color leaving the child's lips. Still there was not a single voluntary or spas- 
 modic effort at inspiration. 
 
 " I have said that at the beginning of my efforts the heart was beating at 
 
The Child, 179 
 
 the rate of sixty beats per minute. This gave me a little confidence that I 
 might revive the child. 
 
 " At the end of fifteen minutes I removed the child from the bath, put my 
 ear to its chest, and counted the heart-beats by my watch. The pulsations were 
 one hundred and twenty per minute, I slapped the child quite vigorously, and 
 it drew up its legs with a slow, convulsive movement. But it made no gasping 
 eflforts to draw in the air, a movement that usually cheers the physician in 
 these cases. Meantime the water in the pail had been renewed by fresh hot 
 water, I set the child in it, and with my hand laved the water upon the child's 
 breast and neck. Under the influence of these hot douches the capillaries 
 could be seen to fill with blood, as shown by the skin turning red, thus show- 
 ing that the heart was doing its part. Still no respiratory efforts. I com- 
 menced artificial respiration again, and continued for ten minutes more. At 
 the end of that time, the midwife stated that she could not deliver the after- 
 birth, and that the woman was flooding. I was compelled to leave the child 
 for a short interval. Laid it on the table and told the midwife to rub it while I 
 attended to the mother. 
 
 "I was detained five minutes and then returned to my little charge. I 
 found on putting my ear to its chest that the heart was beating only thirty 
 times per minute. I had little hopes of resuscitating it, but wished to see what 
 the effect of artificial respiration might be, and so replaced the child in the hot 
 water and renewed my efforts. At the end of three minutes I removed the 
 child, and found the heart beating at the rate of ninety per minute. At the 
 end of ten minutes more the heart was beating one hundred and ten times per 
 minute. 
 
 " It was now a little more than three quarters of an hour since the child was 
 born, and in spite of the fact that the heart was beating quite normally, and 
 that there had been two reflex drawings up of the legs, there had not been the 
 faintest effort at an attempt toward spontaneous respiration. It seemed to me 
 that the nerve-centres governing the respiratory function or the nerve-connec- 
 tion between these centres and the lungs had been injured, and the lungs could 
 not voluntarily act. Artificial respiration, as I practised it, seemed to answer 
 to supply the blood with air, and thus favor the heart's natural action. I 
 resumed my efforts and continued them for fifteen minutes, making an hour 
 since the child's birth. Heart beating over a hundred per minute, and skin 
 and lips a good color. I suspended operations for three minutes ; heart ran 
 down to thirty beats per minute. Resumed my efforts, and heart was soon 
 beating at ninety per minute. I had given up any hopes of establishing natural 
 respiration, but was simply carrjdng on an experiment. An hour and fifteen 
 minutes after the birth of the child, I suspended work for five minutes, owing 
 to my own fatigue. On resuming, the heart was beating very slow, less than 
 twenty per minute, the child, however, made another spasmodic movement of 
 its legs. 
 
 "My efforts soon ran the heart-beats up to sixty per minute, and there it 
 remained as long as I continued artificial respiration. I had become very much 
 fatigued by this time, and occasionally laid the child aside so as to rest myself. 
 Every time I resumed artificial respiration, I could increase the rate of heart- 
 pulsation. 
 
 " An hour and three quarters after the birth of the child the heart was beat- 
 ting very slowly, not more than eight or ten beats per minute. My efforts ran 
 
i8o The Conquest of Death. 
 
 the rate up to forty beats per minute. I then definitely abandoned the experi- 
 ment, owing to my own fatigue, not because my subject was exhausted. The 
 child never made a respiratory effort during all this time. It seemed that the 
 action of the heart might have been continued for many hours in this case had 
 artificial respiration been continued steadily. I noticed that the more rapid 
 the artificial respiratory movements were made the more quickly the pulse 
 rose. 
 
 " Respiratory movements in a new-bom child should be made forty or fifty 
 times a minute instead of twenty times, as usually taught. An infant breathes 
 naturally about forty times a minute, and this rate should be the rule in arti- 
 ficial respiratory movements. 
 
 " There are certain conclusions that may be drawn from this case : 
 
 " I. The method of artificial respiration advocated in this paper ventilates 
 the lungs. This was shown by the fact that for an hour and three quarters the 
 blood received a fair supply of oxygen, as shown in the capillaries of the skin, 
 without the child making a single voluntary or spasmodic effort at inspiration. 
 
 " 2. It was demonstrated that the action of the heart is stimulated and con-, 
 tinued by supplying the lungs with air. The pulse-rate rose and fell in direct 
 ratio with the attempts at artificial respiration. 
 
 ** Flint's Physiology states that, in experiments on animals, ' if the heart be 
 exposed in a living animal and artificial respiration kept up, although the 
 pulsations are diminished in frequency and increased in force, after a time they 
 become perfectly regular and so continue just as long as air is adequately sup- 
 plied to the lungs.' 
 
 ''3.— That in certain cases the respiratory function cannot be established, 
 owing possibly to injuries to the medulla. 
 
 "Case; II. — Stout German woman. Multipara. I was called to the case, 
 and reached the house, according to the mother's statement, a half-hour after 
 the child was born. From the circumstances of the case, I do not think this 
 statement an exaggeration. The mother stated that when the child was bom 
 it screamed loudly for a minute, but she had neither heard nor felt it since. 
 
 "The mother lay on a German feather-bed, resting on her elbow, in a semi- 
 reclining posture, thus making at the hips, in the soft bed an artificial pond 
 that contained about a pail of mixed blood and amniotic fluid, lying in which, 
 face downward, was the infant, apparently dead — drowned. It could not have 
 been in that position less than half an hour, as the child was born just as the 
 messenger left the house to summon me. I removed it and quickly rubbed it 
 off" with hot water. No pulsation of the heart could be felt and the child was 
 limp and cool. On putting my ear to its chest I could just distinguish a faint 
 thud at the rate of about twenty beats per minute. I put the child into hot 
 water and commenced artificial respiration after the method given in the pre- 
 ceding case. In five minutes I listened to the heart-beat and found it much 
 stronger and at the rate of about ninety beats per minute. No respiratory 
 efforts yet. I resumed my work, and in three minutes more (eight minutes 
 from the beginning) the child made its first gasp. . In a short time thereafter 
 respiration was well established. The child is now living and healthy. 
 
 " This was not a case of asphyxia neonatorum, strictly speaking, because 
 the child cried immediately after birth and then was drowned. 
 
 "The case was introduced here because it illustrates two things : i. The 
 influence of artificial respiration on the heart ; the pulse-rate running up from 
 
The Child. i8i 
 
 twenty beats per minute to at least ninety beats before the child made any 
 respiratory efforts. 2. The ease with which a child is resuscitated after it has 
 once cried and thus distended its air-cells, as compared with the diflSculty of 
 resuscitating a child, no more badly asphyxiated, but whose air-cells have 
 never been distended and are completely collapsed, as at birth. 
 
 *' Case III. — Italian woman, primipara. I^arge male child, face anterior. A 
 very tedious labor. Child born at length after delay with the shoulders. 
 Badly asyphiated. I commenced artificial respiration after the method de- 
 scribed above. There were no reflex movements in this case. It was just three 
 quarters of an hour before the child gave the first convulsive, spasmodic gasp ; 
 then ten minutes' unremitting eflFort before the second respiratory gasp was 
 made. After this the respiratory efforts became gradually more frequent, but 
 it was an hour and forty minutes before the function was established so that 
 the child could breathe alone. Even then it breathed with difficulty, and it 
 was more than twelve hours before the respirations were natural. The child 
 made a good recovery. 
 
 " Case IV. — Mother a young and fleshy primipara. An exceedingly tedious 
 labor. Instrumental delivery after prolonged traction. The child was bom 
 with blue and swollen face, and apparently badly asphyxiated. Before the 
 cord was tied, the child made a single convulsive effort at inspiration, and my 
 hand could feel the heart pulsate. After tying the cord I asked the nurse to 
 cut it. Unfortunately she cut it on the wrong side of the ligature, and, as a 
 consequence, there was a quick escape of about three drachms of blood. The 
 child immediately became blanched and relaxed, and made no further efforts 
 at inspiration. I tried the usual methods of reflex irritation, expecting no 
 difficulty in restoring respiration, but to no avail. I could now not feel the 
 heart beat, and on listening at the chest could just hear that it was beating very 
 faintly, and only about thirty times to the minute. It seemed to me then that 
 the sudden abstraction of blood from the large umbilical vessels connecting so 
 directly with the heart, had caused a shock that had nearly suspended cardiac 
 action. It is an old and almost universally accepted theoiy that, in the words 
 of Cazeau : ' When the child is born with a general injection of the capillaries 
 of the head and trunk, it is evident that the first indication is to relieve the 
 engorgement of the head and lungs, which is done by promptly cutting the 
 umbilical cord and allowing a few spoonfuls of blood to escape.* 
 
 " It would seem that the theory on which such practice is based, however 
 plausible it may seem, is unsound in fact. Even if there were any evidence to 
 prove that there can be a dangerous congestion of the head and lungs during 
 the labor, the active cause is over as soon as the child is born. Bleeding the 
 child then is like locking the doors after the thief has left the premises. Such, 
 congestion, if present, would be best relieved by drawing the blood to the sur- 
 face and by stimulating the heart, rather than by paralyzing it by abstracting 
 blood from it. There are but eight ounces of blood in the new-bom child and 
 * a few spoonfuls ' may represent a respectable portion of the whole amount. 
 
 *' Without dwelling further on this point, it may be said : i. That it has not 
 been shown that a dangerous passive congestion of the brain and lungs often 
 arises from a prolonged labor. 2. That, even if such a congestion existed, 
 abstraction of blood from the large vessels leading to the heart after the birth 
 is completed is a useless and dangerous procedure. 
 
 "As a result of the umbilical bleeding in this case, what seemed a simple 
 
t82 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 case of asphyxia was converted into the most obstinate one I have ever en- 
 countered. After fifteen minutes of artificial respiration, with the child in the 
 hot bath, it gave a slight convulsive gasp. I removed it and listened to the 
 heart and found it beating faintly at the rate of about sixty beats per minute. 
 Even as I listened, the heart-rate grew less and the sound fainter, and a pallor 
 spread over its surface. I replaced the child in the bath and recommenced 
 treatment. The capillaries of the skin filled again, and after ten m.inutes there 
 was another attempt at inspiration. These respiratory gasps becoming more fre- 
 quent and at more regular intervals, after a half hour I removed the child and 
 tried for a minute the Schultz * swinging method ' of artificial respiration. An 
 almost immediate collapse was the result ; no more efforts at inspiration, and 
 the lips became blue and the nose cold and white. Again artificial respiration 
 in the hot bath, for thirty minutes continuously (making one hour up to this 
 time), and the spasmodic gaspings were quite frequent, and it seemed as if 
 respiration were on the point of being established. I removed the child and 
 tried first the Sylvester method and then the catheter in the trachea. The 
 gaspings ceased, and very quickly the heart pulsations grew slower and fainter. 
 Throughout the whole time during which artificial respiration was kept up in 
 this case (a little more than two hours) the difl&culty seemed to be in getting 
 the natural circulation established. In this case, unlike Case I., the respiratory 
 centres seemed ready to assume their function but were delayed by weakness in 
 the circulatory centres. It took two hours or more of almost continuous efforts 
 at artificial respiration before the function was established. Many times I 
 stopped my efforts for a minute or two, or tried other methods, when the heart- 
 rate invariably lessened rapidly, and the case went into a state of collapse. 
 
 "When respiration was at last established, it was slow and gasping for 
 several hours. The next day the child had several convulsions, but these were 
 overcome by the liberal use of bromide of potassium, and the child finally made 
 a good recovery. At this writing the child is eighteen months of age, and 
 mentally and physically bright and strong. 
 
 " During the more than ten years in which I have practised the method of 
 artificial respiration given above, there have been many remarkable cases of 
 recovery from asphyxia, but the above typical cases are sufficient to illustrate 
 the principles of this method. 
 
 " My conclusions are that in a bad case of asphyxia neonatorum : i. Direct 
 insufflation of the lungs is imperative. 2. This should be combined with move- 
 ments to increase the diameters of the thoracic cavity. 3. That throughout 
 the process the temperature of the child's body should be kept at or above 100** 
 F., in order that the action of the heart may not be impeded. 
 
 ** These requisites can be met, so far as known to the writer, alone by the 
 method of artificial respiration given above." 
 
 Soon after the child is delivered and breathes, and even when it 
 does not breathe, within a reasonable time the umbilical cord attach- 
 ing it to the placenta and circulation of the mother should be twice 
 tied tightly by a narrow cord, preferably of linen bobbin. The first 
 ligature should be made one inch and a half from the child, and the 
 second three inches. It should be tied tightly. After the ligatures 
 are made the cord should be cut between them, and the placenta, 
 
The Child. 183 
 
 when born, be removed. The end of the cord between the point 
 where cut and the point ligated should be treated as follows. A 
 piece of soft linen, about three inches square when folded four times, 
 with a hole burned through the centre large enough for the cord to 
 pass, is pulled over the cut end to the point ligated, and then that 
 portion folded carefully in and laid up, and to the right, and a band- 
 age placed around the child's body to hold it in place. The linen 
 should be well vaselined before it is used. 
 
 The general details of childbirth and of all complications should 
 properly be left to experts when these can be had. Still the more 
 important points should be understood by every one. It is sufficient 
 to add here that a serious delay in the birth of the placenta is, 
 exceedingly likely to cause post-partum hemorrhage. It is through 
 the placenta that the unborn child receives its blood from the mother. 
 The placenta is attached to the child by the umbilical cord, and to 
 the uterus of the mother in a general and complex manner. It> 
 should always be bom within two hours after the child. If this is 
 not the case your physician will help its expulsion by external ma- 
 nipulation, by changing the woman's position, or he should take it 
 out by the hand introduced into the uterus. When no physician is 
 present and no bleeding occurs the attendants may wait longer, but, 
 when serious bleeding comes on, no delay is safe. 
 
 The Crede method is the best and safest way of expelling the 
 delayed placenta. The operator in this method takes a napkin in his 
 hand, and at the first pain seizes the uterus through the napkin, and 
 then gently expels the placenta. This method, or something like 
 it, is practised by a number of primitive peoples in delay of the 
 afterbirth. (See Engelmann.) 
 
 In using the Crede method care shoidd be taken not to compress 
 the ovaries. If the patient complains of pain during the operation, 
 a new hold should be taken with a view of freeing the ovaries from 
 the grasp of the hand. The drawbacks to taking the placenta by 
 inserting the hand are two. First, the danger of infection or injury 
 to the parts, and second, the difficulty of taking out the placenta 
 clean and clear, thus leaving after sources of trouble. 
 
 Almost all doctors of experience take the placenta, if it be un- 
 born, as soon as their attention can be given to it. This is the best 
 course. If nature has given out, the sooner the woman is relieved of 
 everything, and started on the road to recovery, the better. 
 
 The child after birth should be carefully sponged. The water 
 should be blood- warm, and may be used after the usual application 
 of oil or lard. In babes bom before term washing may be omitted, 
 except as to the eyes, and the oil alone applied. The baby should 
 
184 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 generally be wrapped in loose, warm coverings, but not too warm, 
 and may be dressed at the convenience of the nurse. The omission 
 of the fatigue of dressing for two or three days seems especially 
 advantageous in babes of doubtful viability. Babes after the seventh 
 month are viable. 
 
 While the seventh month is generally considered the period of 
 viability, there is now too much evidence in favor of the possibility 
 of life at the sixth month to longer doubt upon this point. Tarnier, 
 by his system of gavage, saved thirty per cent, of children born at 
 the sixth month. Dr. I^lewellyn Elliot even considers the child 
 viable under some conditions at four months. When born before 
 term, the greatest care must be exercised to save them. The prac- 
 tice in the largest New York hospital is to lay these little waifs in. 
 cotton in a box, and to maintain by artificial means a constant warm 
 local temperature. 
 
 The child should be kept warm and put to the mother's breast 
 very soon. The first secretions of the mammary glands of the mother 
 are laxative, and clear the stomach and intestines of the child. 
 When a natural movement does not take place within twenty-four 
 hours, half a teaspoonful of syrup of rhubarb should be given. If 
 this is not effective it should be supplemented by a lukewarm enema. 
 The baby's bowels should move once or twice a day, but exceptions 
 occur to this. The mother's milk is the natural and the best food 
 for the child for the first eight or nine months. This is the fact to- 
 day, but how long it will be so cannot be told. Children, particularly 
 amongst the poorer classes, die in frightfully increased numbers 
 when deprived of their natural nourishment. 
 
 If the passages are of good appearance and digested, a consider- 
 able variation from this rule may be allowed. 
 
 The mortality amongst children fed by wet-nurses is also muck 
 greater than that by the mother-nursed. 
 
 The importance of nursing, both to the mother and child, is great. 
 Nursing prevents too quick new conception, it aids the return of the 
 uterus to its normal condition, and prevents the origin of troubles 
 that frequently become chronic without it. In nursing, menstrua-^ 
 tion rarely occurs before the eighth or ninth month, when the baby 
 should be weaned. Dr. Winter's figures are : of 1,327 women only 
 125 menstruated while nursing. Of these 125, 40 were married and 
 85 were unmarried. Among the latter insufficient care must be 
 considered as likely. 
 
 Nursing is advantageous often in post-partum hemorrhage. The 
 excitement of the mammary gland causes reflex contraction in the 
 uterus, tending to stop the bleeding. The mother who nurses her 
 
The Child. 185 
 
 child must avoid frights, excitement, and especially anger. A num- 
 ber of curious cases are on record, showing the influence of nerve or 
 mental conditions of the mother upon her milk, and through it upon 
 her babe. There are several authenticated instances of even the 
 death of a baby on being suckled after a violent fit of temper in the 
 mother. 
 
 Consequently a quiet home-life is most advantageous at this time. 
 The food of the mother will also afiect her milk, and should be care- 
 fully watched. In cows the food influences the color, smell, taste, 
 specific gravity, and chemical composition of the milk. It is equally 
 certain that the human female is similarly affected by food in her 
 secretions. 
 
 In nursing, both breasts should be given the baby, not necessa- 
 rily at the same nursing, but so that, as far as possible, the child 
 shall receive during the twenty-four hours the same amount from 
 each. The breasts are kept healthier in this way, and the child also. 
 Recent researches on this line in the hospital at Lyons show that the 
 mortality of infants nursed on one breast exceed that of those nursed 
 on both by twelve per cent. 
 
 The increased health and prospect in life in the child suckled by 
 its mother is most notable. Wet-nursing I am opposed to. Pre- 
 pared foods or cow's milk properly diluted can, in case of necessity, 
 be given with due care and cleanliness, and the baby live, but noth- 
 ing can overcome the drawbacks to wet-nurses. These are usually 
 the victims of seduction. Their own babes must be dead or put out 
 to be hand-fed. An examination by Dr. Joseph E. Winters of New 
 York shows that the children of wet-nurses almost invariably die. 
 This must affect the wet-nurse. .Losing her child will cause her to 
 grieve, which will through the milk react on the foster-child, or, if 
 she do not grieve for her own child, then such a woman is of too 
 hard a nature to entrust with a child of any one else. Wet-nurses, 
 if married and deserting their own children, are unnatural and con- 
 sequently unreliable. 
 
 If the child of the proposed wet-nurse is already dead, some 
 weakness of constitution or liability to infection may be suspected. 
 These women not infrequently suffer from venereal diseases which 
 they are liable to impart to children that suckle them. 
 
 Foumier {Syphilis and Marriage^ p. 181, et seq.^ cites a number 
 of cases showing the danger from infection of syphilis from this 
 source. 
 
 First case, in Notes: *'A nurse infected with syphilis comes 
 into a young family, whose infant is confided to her. She infects 
 the child. The nature of the morbid symptom remains unrecognized 
 
1 86 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 at first, as would almost necessarily be the case, so that no precau- 
 tions are taken against the possible dangers of such a contamination. 
 What happens? The infant on its part infects, first, its mother; 
 second, its grandmother ; third and fourth, two nursery maids of the 
 family, girls of absolutely irreproachable character. And the 
 young wife transmits the contagion to her husband some months 
 later." 
 
 Second case. Notes from work of Amilcare Ricordi : " A syphi- 
 litic nurse going into a small village transmits syphilis to sixteen, 
 eighteen, twenty-three persons, and becomes the origin of a small 
 local epidemic." 
 
 Nurses of any kind introduced into a family ought always to be 
 examined by the family physician to secure, in some measure, im- 
 munity from danger of infection, not only from the terrible malady 
 of syphilis, but also from other diseases. Quite a number of wet- 
 nurses become professionals. They have children only to gain the 
 wages of wet-nursing, and regularly consign their own offspring to 
 what the figures show to be practically certain death. 
 
 Dr. Winters gives some comparative statistics as to the rate of 
 mortality of children nursed by mothers and those nursed by wet 
 nurses. 
 
 BxAMPIvE I. 
 
 400 children during period of five years : 
 Mortality of infants suckled by mothers, 16 in 100. 
 
 " ** wet-nurses, 28 in 100. 
 
 BxAMPi^E II. 
 
 Observations on 600 children from 1872 to 1879 : 
 Mortality of mother-nursed, 10 in 100. 
 " wet- ** 26 in 100. 
 
 ExAMPi^E III. 
 
 Paris : 
 
 Mortality of mother-nursed, 10 in 100. 
 " wet- " . 29 in 100. 
 
 In Foundling Hospital : 
 
 Mortality of mother-nursed, 6 in 100. 
 " wet- '* 36 in 100. 
 
 The sickness and weakness which each additional death means, 
 make the contrast still more striking. The influence of the midwife 
 and of the attending physician is shown by Dr. Winters to be very 
 great in inducing mothers to suckle or not to suckle their own 
 children. An inquiry on this subject showed that some physicians 
 had but one in ten of their patients in the well-to-do classes suckle 
 
The Child, 187 
 
 their babes, while others in the same city had nineteen in twenty of 
 their patients perform this duty. Physicians or nurses with a bad 
 influence in this respect should be avoided. 
 
 Suckling is of paramount importance to the health of the mother, 
 but there are cases in which the welfare of the child demands that 
 the function should be performed but a short time or not at all. 
 Such cases occur when the mother has some constitutional disease, 
 as consumption, syphilis, etc. Nursing under these circumstances 
 may increase the tendency of the child at birth to the mother's 
 disease. There are also at times abnormal conditions in the mother's 
 milk, as excessive acidity, which prevents proper nourishment by 
 washing out the phosphates and inducing rickets in the child. 
 Under such conditions, which are exceptions, and with due care in 
 marriage ought to be rare, hand-feeding must be resorted to. 
 
 Of prepared foods there are many kinds. Only standard ones 
 freshly made should be used. Some of these will suit one child and 
 not another, so in hand-feeding the idiosyncrasies of the child must 
 be considered. Cow's milk is easily obtained and is cheap. It is a 
 complete food, and properly treated agrees with most children. One 
 method of using it is when sterilized. This is accomplished by 
 boiling and by tight-sealing or corking of the bottle in which it is 
 placed until used. Even a cotton plug is sufl&cient to prevent the 
 entry of germs. It should be boiled but a few moments. The 
 objection to this is the liability of boiled milk to induce constipation. 
 While this method destroys all germs, still my own observation is 
 against boiled milk in its effect on the child. 
 
 The most recent examinations of the effects of prepared foods are 
 certainly unfavorable to them. The proportion of babies in a weak 
 or rickety condition on these foods is very large. They are largely 
 composed of starchy matter, neither a complete food in itself nor easy 
 of digestion, such as it is. Some of them, fairly good if fresh, spoil 
 easily, and must always be suspected of too long keeping. Con- 
 sequently these foods should only be used as a last resort and with 
 the greatest discrimination. 
 
 One good food, on condensed milk as a basis, is : 
 4 oz. water. 
 
 1 heaping teaspoonful Mellin's food. 
 
 2 teaspoonfuls condensed milk. 
 This is about right for a babe of ten months. 
 
 Dr. Arthur Meigs, Dr. Joseph Winters, and a number of other 
 eminent men recommend the following food as the best substitute for 
 mother's milk : milk 3 parts, cream i part, lime-water i part, boiled 
 water 2 parts, sugar of milk i part. Solution of bicarbonate of soda, 
 
1 88 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 eight grains to the ounce, may be substituted for the lime-water in 
 case the baby is constipated. In a healthy child, ordinary sugar may 
 be substituted for the expensive sugar of milk. This formula is for 
 a baby of six months. It may be modified in proportion to suit indi- 
 vidual cases and different ages. 
 
 In all cases when cow's milk is used the greatest care should be 
 resorted to in feeding the cow, in its housing, in washing the bag and 
 udders upon milking, and in seeing that the milker has his hands 
 thoroughly washed, finger nails clean, and the pail and filter scalded. 
 The importance of these precautions may be judged when we learn 
 that in a certain carefully conducted creamery the I^azell separator 
 accumulated from one thousand quarts of milk enough cow dung to 
 fill two hands. 
 
 The milk of a cow known by examination to be healthy diluted 
 one half at least with boiled water is perhaps the best substitute for 
 the mother's milk. Condensed milk is also good. In all cases where 
 foods other than the mother's milk are used the greatest care must be 
 exercised to keep out germs and to prevent fermentation. The bottles, 
 pitchers, and vessels used should invariably be thoroughly scalded 
 out before and immediately after use. 
 
 In hand-fed children rickets is exceedingly liable to occur. Dr. 
 I. M. Snow says : '' Rickets is largely confined to children reared 
 upon artificial food. Thus, Trousseau found that among one hundred 
 rachitic children, ninety-eight had either not been suckled at all or 
 had been weaned very young. " ' ' The correct proportion of fat to 
 the solids in human milk is i to 4, but many artificial farinaceous 
 foods contain a mere trace of fat, from T-2oto 1-200 of the total solids. 
 Rickets is, according to Cheadle, a diet disease which may be caused 
 at will by a rachitic diet and cured by an anti-rachitic diet. ' ' Artificial 
 foods are also deficient in the earthy salts. 
 
 The most prominent symptoms of rickets are pallor owing to the 
 poverty of the blood, sweating without sufiicient cause, nervous de- 
 rangement shown by irritability, convulsions, tetanus, etc. ; muscular 
 languor and weakness, abnormal condition of the mucous membrane 
 shown by bronchitis, croup, and diarrhoea; weakness in the ligaments 
 shown by yielding of the spine, relaxed knee and ankle joint ; and 
 troubles in the osseous system shown by the bending or deformity of 
 the longer bones, bending of the ribs, etc. These symptoms may be 
 all or only partly present and may be much masked. 
 
 Another symptom is delayed dentition. The teeth should com- 
 mence to appear by the ninth month. If they do not, the condition of 
 the child and its diet should be carefully inquired into. When rickets 
 is present or suspected the farinaceous food should be reduced to a 
 
The Child. 189 
 
 minimum and cod-liver oil or other fats, chopped or scrapped raw 
 meat, eggs, and all the milk they can take added to the diet. It is 
 probable that in a given meal much meat should not be taken at the 
 same time with much milk. 
 
 The importance of looking out for rickets in artificially fed chil- 
 dren is clear when we reflect upon the large number of rickety chil- 
 dren whose troubles are caused by their diet. 
 
 It may be further accentuated by the words of Sir. Wm. Jenner. 
 This distinguished physician says that rickety children are exceed- 
 ingly liable to pneumonia, bronchitis, and collapsed lung. He also 
 speaks of the excessive mortality in such children when attacked with 
 measles, whooping-cough, etc. According to Jenner more children 
 die from rickets either primarily or secondarily than from any other 
 cause. 
 
 When a baby is weaned it should be to the spoon and cup and not 
 to the bottle ; this for safety on account of the diflSculty of keeping 
 the bottles sweet and clean and the danger in their almost inevitable 
 retention of some residuum which ferments and so injures the child's 
 digestion by polluting the food. 
 
 Teething is usually a troublesome and sometimes a critical time 
 for children. If the irritation caused by the teeth in cutting through 
 the gum is excessive a reflex derangement of the digestion is exceed- 
 ingly likely to occur. Consequently great care in the diet must at 
 this time be exercised. In case the teeth do not come through the 
 gum readily, the difficulty may be decreased by lancing. Lancing 
 the gums, however, if prematurely done, may have a contrary effect. 
 The wound heals up before the tooth comes through and the cicatrized 
 tissue is harder for the tooth to pierce than was the normal gum. 
 Nurses to help in the care of children lighten the labors of the mother. 
 The persons seeking this employment are usually irresponsible and 
 unreliable. Sometimes they resort to very reprehensible and inj urious 
 means to quiet the child under their care. Anodynes and narcotics 
 are common causes of injury to children from this source. Other and 
 still worse things are done to quiet the child, such as tampering with 
 the sexual organs, etc. 
 
 It is therefore necessary to watch all nurses closely and to use the 
 greatest care in selecting them. The babe should always have a 
 basket or a crib to itself. 
 
 It should never sleep in the same bed with the mother. The 
 reason for this is the danger to the baby of being suffocated. 
 
 Every year in London a great number of babies lose their lives 
 in this way, and the mother in her sleep unconsciously destroys the 
 child so precious to her heart. 
 
IQO The Conquest of Death. 
 
 lyondon is no exception to the general rule, for the average of 
 infant deaths from this cause wherever it has been examined shows 
 a similar condition to prevail. It is a real danger and should be 
 carefully guarded against. Folding beds are dangerous. Fifty-six 
 children were suffocated in New York by being accidentally shut up 
 in these beds last year. 
 
 Medicines should be avoided with children. Hot applications, 
 poultices, such as those made ot onions, flaxseed, etc., rubbings, 
 etc., are good when necessary and can rarely do harm, but medicines 
 in their effect are too uncertain, and, if improperly employed, too 
 injurious to be used except in serious cases and with skilled advice. 
 
 In the sickness of children as in all sickness the nursing is what 
 saves. A good nurse is more important than a good doctor. Every 
 one should study somewhat of nursing. Care and cleanliness, cloth- 
 ing and diet, these are the vital questions. Over-attention and 
 coddling will prevent a due development of the constitution and 
 predispose to disease. This should be avoided. The importance of 
 having the nursing done under the direction of a physician is very 
 great. In all cases of a serious kind the best physician attainable 
 should be employed at once. Never hesitate about sending for the 
 best. He will be cheapest in the end. 
 
 In the sickness of children, the rule should be isolation of the 
 sick one, not only from the healthy members of the family but from 
 any other sick one as well ; from the healthy ones on account of 
 the danger of communicating the disease from the sick to the well. 
 Even should no spread of the specific malady occur, there is a cer- 
 tainty of lowering the vitality of the well ones exposed, especially 
 dtuing sleep, to the air of the sick-room. From the sick ones the 
 sick should be separated. This is on account of the danger of infec- 
 tion or contagion, if the diseases be different, and on account of the 
 certainty of increasing the intensity of the disease, if the malady be 
 the same, by every additional patient placed in a room or ward. 
 
 Experience has been general in showing that with equal care 
 isolated patients always do best. This superior prospect of recovery 
 holds good even where the care and conditions are very unfavorable 
 to the isolated. 
 
 The mortality of children from cholera infantum and kindred 
 diseases is usually greater in infant hospitals than it is anywhere else. 
 The same thing is true of the hospital epidemics of infectious pneu- 
 monia, of erysipelas, of blood-poisoning in wounds and surgical 
 operations, and of puerperal fever in lying-in hospitals. 
 
 In our late war it was shown that small -pox had an average in- 
 crease of intensity and mortality in the individual corresponding with 
 
The Child, 191 
 
 average increase of patients placed together. Owing to this fact, 
 better results were obtained in every case where tents were used for 
 hospitals than in even the best arranged buildings. In isolating sick 
 members of a family, the attic or upper rooms should be preferred, 
 for the top of a house may be shut off from communication with the 
 rest of the house better than the lower floors. There also seems a 
 greater facility of infection from below upward than from above 
 downward. If the household arrangements do not permit of isola- 
 tion in the house, a tent or tents should be bought or hired for the 
 purpose. Such expense in the commencement will save in the 
 length and intensity of the disease in the individual, and will prevent 
 additional cases with their consequent increase of expense for doctor 
 and nurse. In cold climates the use of tents is of course limited. 
 Convalescence will be safer and quicker, and many lives will be saved 
 that otherwise would be lost by the isolation of the sick. Thus the 
 poor may calculate that a dollar spent in these precautions will not 
 only diminish suffering and save life, but will save tens and perhaps 
 hundreds of dollars in money. 
 
 The human system has a great power of resisting morbific influ- 
 ences. The blood corpuscles will encyst or destroy a considerable 
 number of germs or active individuals of various kinds of minute 
 life injurious or fatal in large numbers to the body. Some individ- 
 uals and some conditions of the system have this power more than 
 others : for instance, gouty persons have, according to some, a con- 
 siderable resistance to all contagious diseases, and while great suf- 
 ferers from their own malady rarely take anything else. So also, 
 individuals capable of resisting contagion or infection at one time 
 may be extremely susceptible at another. 
 
 The acid diathesis seems that most resistant to the specific attack 
 of microscopic life. 
 
 The Italian system of treating malarial fevers seems, if this be 
 correct, to rest on a secure basis. They give large amounts of lemon 
 juice in these cases and have better results from this than from any 
 other treatment. 
 
 It appears probable, therefore, that in cases of contagious or in- 
 fectious disease, a large amount of lemon or orange juice would be 
 beneficial. I have found this course of personal advantage in malarial 
 fever. I^arge amounts of acid given for yellow fever at Panama 
 proved better than the usual treatment. 
 
 In the body, in the ground, and in the air we are in continual 
 contact with the minute life, capable of producing specific disease, 
 and without which such specific diseases are probably impossible. 
 Their dangerous activity in the system seems to be due to two causes : 
 
192 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 first, the favorable condition of the system for their development, 
 such as low vitality, wounds, etc. ; and second, the presence of such 
 specific minute life in considerable quantity. 
 
 In some cases, diseases due to bacteria, etc. , will arise more from 
 the first of these causes ; in others, more from the second. 
 
 In the streets of a city, we must breathe many germs of certain 
 diseases every day. The air in the crowded portions of Paris has 
 been shown to contain thousands of germs and germ life per square 
 foot of air, to one such life in the square foot of air of country dis- 
 tricts near by. 
 
 Consumptive persons spit in the streets, the sputa become dry, 
 and the germ life of the bacillus tuberculosis must mingle with the 
 dust of the city and be breathed by the inhabitants. The micro- 
 organism said to be the specific infection of pneumonia is found in 
 the buccal secretions of healthy persons, so also are the pus organ- 
 isms, staphylococcus pyogenes aureus, albus, and citreus. The 
 tetanus bacillus is widely distributed, and is especially numerous in 
 rich loam, as that generally worked in by gardeners and farmers. 
 
 Still the frequent contact of these forms of life with the body is 
 not necessarily infectious or fatal. But when large numbers of them 
 accumulate, as in hospital wards, cesspools, drains, tenement houses, 
 etc. , persons of lowered vitality are extremely likely to come under the 
 influence of one or more kinds of them, and persons in good vigor 
 may also become subject to these diseases. 
 
 A peculiarity of some of these micro-organisms such as those of 
 small-pox, measles, scarlet fever, chicken-pox, whooping-cough, 
 etc., is that once having run a course in the human body, they are 
 as a rule incapable of another attack. In practice we find that one 
 attack by any of these organisms is a guaranty against a second one. 
 Even when an exception occurs, the second attack is usually mild. 
 This is the philosophy of vaccination to prevent or render innocuous 
 the dreadful and disgusting disease of small-pox. 
 
 All children should be vaccinated in their first year and until the 
 vaccination takes. At the same time, the greatest possible care 
 should be taken to have the vaccine secured direct from a reliable 
 source, and to have the operator's hands and instruments clean. 
 The reason of this is the frequent introduction into the body of 
 dangerous germs with those of the vaccine, and the consequent 
 disease or death of the patient. A great number of diseases have 
 been transmitted in this way. Sometimes one source of infection, 
 such as a diseased child, will cause an epidemic when virus taken 
 from it is used to vaccinate others. 
 
 At about the sixth and fifteenth years children should be re- 
 
The Child, 193 
 
 vaccinated. The importatice of vaccination may be judged by the 
 results of the vaccination and re-vaccination in the German army. 
 During the Franco- Prussian war of 1870 the Germans lost during 
 the whole campaign out of 913,967 eJBfectives but 261 men from 
 small-pox. At the same time in the less carefully tended French 
 army there was a death-rate from small-pox of 67.60 in the 1000. 
 Here is indeed a remarkable difference. A way will probably be 
 found to prevent other contagious diseases such as scarlet fever in 
 the same manner as is now practised for small-pox. 
 
 Other classes of micro-organisms seem on the contrary only the 
 more likely to find a lodgment in the body after once running a 
 course in it. Some such are those of diphtheria, all the malarial 
 organisms, gonorrhoea, etc. Persons having had an attack of the 
 first class of organisms are indicated as nurses or attendants for a 
 disease produced by such a cause in others on account of the prob- 
 able immunity from recontracting the trouble. In the second class 
 it is exactly the reverse. The value of disinfecting sick-rooms, the 
 clothing, the person, the excrements, etc., has been clearly demon- 
 strated. Equally the value of cleanliness, care, and careful antisepsis 
 in surgery is shown in the records of our hospitals and private 
 practice. All this is known by the intelligent. It is also generally 
 understood that various specific micro-organisms are widely diffused ; 
 that these accumulated in considerable numbers are dangerous if not 
 deadly, and that therefore all means favorable to their reproduction, 
 by which they become concentrated, as excrements, drains, piles of 
 rubbish, swill, general uncleanliness, confined damp as in un- 
 ventilated cellars, etc., should be habitually disinfected, removed, 
 or destroyed. 
 
 In connection with infectious and contagious diseases it seems 
 appropriate to call attention here to the frequency and intensity of 
 so-called children's diseases in armies. The necessary crowding of 
 soldiers and the customary if not necessary crowding of children in 
 their sleeping-rooms may be the principal promoter of these diseases 
 in both cases. From considerable inquiry, only children seem largely 
 exempt from these diseases. Whether their exemption is due to 
 no crowding or to other causes is not certain, but it seems reasonable 
 to attribute some relation between crowding and the frequency of 
 these diseases. 
 
 The health of the child is best maintained by fresh air, exercise, 
 and good food. 
 
 The food should be administered at regular times, diminished in 
 frequency as the child grows older, and until three meals a day is 
 attained. This rule applies to suckled children as well as to those 
 
194 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 weaned or hand-fed. At about the sixth month healthy children 
 should no longer be suckled or fed at night. By night is meant the 
 time between the hours of lo p.m. and 5 a.m., or ii p.m. and 6 a.m. 
 The interval may be gradually lengthened as the child grows older. 
 
 The times of exercise, sleep, and evacuations should all be care- 
 fully regulated, and the child be kept out-doors as much as possible. 
 In the matter of sleep a child can not have too much. All young 
 children should be given an opportunity to sleep in the middle of the 
 day. When the baby's meals are at regular times, its hours of rest 
 fixed, its excretions of waste matter encouraged at certain times, and 
 its opportunities of free exercise and investigation made ample, the 
 mother will find child-care easy and not excessive in its demands 
 upon her time. 
 
 Even with a large family, the helpless ones will never be too 
 numerous to make proper care by one woman impossible. At the 
 fourth birth at least, the first baby will have become capable of 
 partial self-care and of helping the mother as well. The order im- 
 planted in a child's life by assistance of the mother will remain with 
 it through life, and the young child growing up will become, as it 
 should, a help and not an increase to the mother's care. 
 
 One of the great things for a young mother to learn is, after doing 
 the essentials for the child, to let it alone. The error of most 
 mothers is interfering too much with the baby's investigations and 
 in often rewarding it for crying. 
 
 The tendency of women of force and character, as well as of the 
 foolish and ignorant, is often to do too much for the child. To think 
 and act for the young child is necessary in many cases, but this 
 should never go beyond what is necessary, for to the extent that it 
 does so, the individuality and self-reliance of the child will be 
 injured and its character lack development. 
 
 The rule should be to see to the evacuations of the baby at a 
 regular time, to change it at regular times, to feed it at regular 
 times, to give it rest at regular times, to wash it at regular times, to 
 dress it according to climate so that it is properly warm, but not 
 clumsily clothed nor decked in anything expensive, and then put 
 the baby down on the floor or ground as soon as it can sit up and 
 let it play and find out things for itself. 
 
 The fact may be borne in mind that our conduct to the new-born 
 child is necessarily based on a reward for incapacity ; but that in 
 mature life the rewards of the world to the then grown child will on 
 the contrary be based on capacity. Consequently the parent, while 
 conforming to the first necessity, must prepare the child for the 
 second. 
 
The Child, ig^ 
 
 The will-power and self-reliance of the child should be built up 
 as fast as possible. A child should not be allowed to derive advan- 
 tage by an appeal from the judgment of one parent to the other. 
 The parents must sustain each other in public and before the child, 
 and settle their policy in private. 
 
 A good night-dress for restless infants is one made like a loose 
 bag to be fastened at the neck. It may have sleeves, but should not 
 provide separately for the legs. This device prevents the child from 
 ever being entirely exposed to the cold and chill winter nights. If 
 the circumstances warrant the whole bed-clothing may be arranged 
 on the same plan. In putting children to bed they should be accus- 
 tomed to no adventitious proceedings. Stories should never be told 
 at bedtime. A healthy child should never be rocked to sleep nor 
 accustomed to anything unnecessary for its welfare. A well-trained 
 child is as sleepy as an ill-trained one. All things likely to 
 attract the child's attention must to some extent prevent or retard 
 the approach of natural rest in sleep. When bedtime comes, a child 
 should expect nothing but sleep. When it has been prepared for 
 bed, to bed it should go. It should be saluted for the night, the 
 light should be extinguished, and the child left to sleep. A con- 
 siderable amount of wear and tear is saved by this system. No 
 possible advantage is lost to the child, its temper is not tried by a 
 resistance to excessive or inopportune demands for unessential rock- 
 ings, songs, stories, or company, and the mother's energy is liberated 
 for other things. 
 
 Very great care must be exercised by parents to avoid themselves 
 and to prevent others from frightening the children by unreal crea- 
 tions of the fancy. Parents and nurses too often endeavor to main- 
 tain their authority by a weak method, that sooner or later will be 
 found out in its falsity by the child. This method is to threaten the 
 child with goblins, bears, devils, etc. , and to people the dark with 
 torturing terrors. A child seems to have no natural objection to the 
 dark, and the frequent fear observable on this point in the young 
 must be attributed to the faulty, nay, criminal influence of those 
 around them. The reaction in the child, when the deception is dis- 
 covered, is a fertile cause of silent alienation. This practice secures 
 obedience less well than a plain, consistent, and straightforward 
 course. It causes great and useless suffering in the child, and 
 eventually confidence in the parent is undermined and the moral 
 nature is shaken to its false foundation. A falsehood should under no 
 circumstances be told a child. With children be silent or be truthful. 
 
 The child is imitative and is consequently much influenced by 
 those who make up its entourage. 
 
196 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 The language, the accent, the grammar, the mental bent, and the 
 religious views of children are all largely influenced by the persons 
 who surround them. Thus it must be seen that the delegation of 
 the care of her children to servants, by the average mother of means, 
 is fraught with danger to her progeny. 
 
 Accents and methods of speech of an inferior kind become fixed, 
 and superstitious and other false and inferior views of religion are 
 stamped into the nature of the child. 
 
 My nurses implanted in me, amongst other things, the idea that 
 to see the new moon over the left shoulder was unlucky, and over 
 the right, lucky. So strong was this conviction that during my 
 youth I made a business of always seeing the new moon over my 
 right shoulder, and when I saw it over the left, by any accident, it 
 made me feel exceedingly uncomfortable. To this day my first view 
 of a new moon brings up at once the idea that I ought to see it over 
 my right shoulder, and I believe that I feel better, at least for a few 
 moments, when I do. If a ridiculous and baseless superstition of 
 this kind implanted in youth can take such a hold, must w^e not be 
 compelled to admit that impressions in regard to the serious matters 
 of life may be received by the child from the same sources and of 
 the same untrue character. 
 
 The impressions of early childhood are hard to eradicate. Many 
 of these remain throughout life in spite of everything that can be 
 done to get rid of them. The impressions of children derived from 
 nurses, servants, associates, and books cannot be too carefully 
 looked after. Servants should be commanded to say nothing on 
 religion to children. That should come from the parents. The 
 child, of course, must not be enslaved and ruined in these cautions 
 to prevent a possible ruin in the open world, but care can easily be 
 taken to provide the proper surroundings, and, as the child grows 
 older, to put the proper kind of reading matter in its way and throw 
 it in association with the best class of children. A proper bringing- 
 up will make a child despise and avoid the vulgar and low, both in 
 books and friends. Cast-iron rules cannot do it. In extreme youth 
 alone is the complete and absolute regulation of association service- 
 able. It is then also that the child cannot be a free agent. Often 
 when parents or mentors correct a child, they themselves do the very 
 things against which they have cautioned it. I have frequently been 
 caught in this way. When one's attention is called to such a matter, 
 the error should be acknowledged and caution used to prevent a 
 repetition. Example is too good a teacher to be given the oppor- 
 tunity to inculcate error in a child. 
 
 Every freedom should be given a baby that is possible and con- 
 
The Child. 197 
 
 sistent with safety from real danger. Little falls, bumps, etc., it 
 must have in the course of its investigations, and the sooner it has 
 them the sooner will it be able to care for itself. A child should be 
 told '* don't " and similar words as seldom as possible, but when you 
 do say " don't," mean it, and make the baby stop what you object 
 to. So with all things in a child's life, give them as much freedom 
 as you can ; never nag them, but when you do give an order, mean 
 it, and have it carried out. 
 
 Reiteration of advice and correction is, doubtless, to some extent 
 necessary. Such action always weakens advice or correction in new 
 matters, tries and irritates both parent and child, and should be 
 avoided as far as possible. 
 
 The eflSiciency of natural penalties in early childhood to avoid 
 physical harm is so clear that natural penalties for unwise conduct 
 should, as far as possible, be availed of. This practice, with proper 
 precaution, may be extended to moral matters. If a child be late in 
 getting ready for meals, walks, etc., deprive the child of such meal 
 or walk, as the case may be. One or two lessons will cure nearly 
 any starting bad habit of this kind. Violent or personal chastise- 
 ment is the last thing to resort to. It always drives the parent and 
 child apart, and associates the rewards and penalties of conduct to 
 the personal and often arbitrary opinion of the parent. A child may 
 pick up a hot coal twice, but that is the extreme limit of ignorance 
 as to its effect. Herbert Spencer, in Education, puts this matter very 
 clearly. He says : 
 
 *' Penalties which the necessary reaction of things round upon them — pen- 
 alties which are inflicted by impersonal agency produce an irritation that is 
 comparatively slight and transient ; whereas, penalties which are voluntarily 
 inflicted by a parent, and are afterwards remembered as caused by him or her, 
 produce an irritation both greater and more continued. Just consider how dis- 
 astrous would be the result if this empirical method were pursued from the 
 beginning. Suppose it were possible for parents to take upon themselves the 
 physical suflferings entailed on their children by ignorance and awkwardness ; 
 and that while bearing these evil consequences they visited on their children 
 certain other evil consequences, with the view of teaching them the impropriety 
 of their conduct. 
 
 ** Suppose that when a child, who had been forbidden to meddle with the 
 kettle, spilt some boiling water on its foot, the mother assumed the scald and 
 gave a blow in place of it ; and similarly in all other cases. Would not the 
 daily mishaps be sources of far more anger tlian now ? Would there not be 
 chronic ill-temper on both sides ? Yet an exactly parallel policy is pursued in 
 after years. A father who punishes his boy for carelessly or wilfully breaking 
 a sister's toy, and then himself pays for a new toy, does substantially the same 
 thing— inflicts an artificial penalty on himself ; his own feelings and those of 
 the transgressor being alike needlessly irritated. If he simply required resti- 
 tution to be made, he would produce far less heart-burning." 
 
198 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 Again Spencer says, p. 186 : 
 
 ** It is a vice of the common system of artificial rewards and punishments, 
 long since noticed by the clear-sighted, that by substituting for the natural 
 results of misbehavior certain threatened tasks or castigations, it produces a 
 radically wrong standard of moral guidance. Having throughout infancy and 
 boyhood always regarded parental or tutorial displeasure as the result of for- 
 bidden action, the youth has gained an established association of ideas between 
 such action and such displeasure, as cause and effect ; and, consequently, 
 when parents and tutors have abdicated, and their displeasure is not to be 
 feared, the restraint on a forbidden action is, in great measure, removed ; the 
 true restraints, the natural reactions, having yet to be learned by sad expe- 
 rience. As writes one who has had personal knowledge of this short-sighted 
 system : * Young men let loose from school, particularly those whose parents 
 have neglected to exercise their influence, plunge into every description of 
 extravagance ; they know no rule of action, they are ignorant of the reasons 
 for moral conduct, they have no foundation to rest upon, and until they have 
 been severely disciplined by the world, are extremely dangerous members 
 of society.' " 
 
 The whole of Spencer's book is worthy of quotation, and I desire 
 that it should be studied. 
 
 The dangerous dissipation into which many young men run when 
 freed, or even partially freed, from restraint shows the error spoken 
 of. Such young men are supposed to be well brought up, but they 
 have to learn that a violation of nature's laws is always followed by 
 a punishment, and that the laws of society, generally following the 
 rules of nature, when violated, bring their punishment with nearly 
 equal certainty. Many yotmg people never escape from the muck 
 they are thus ignorantly gotten into. The true formative and recep- 
 tive moments in their lives having passed, they are no longer capable 
 of a comprehension of the lessons of life, and, started on the wrong 
 road, are unable either to come back or to be brought back. It must 
 be evident to any one who will reflect that the true natural or social 
 penalty of an offence is the one to invoke and to depend upon when 
 possible. A child brought up as thus indicated has a sure and cer- 
 tain foimdation for its acts. When the personal equation comes up 
 in a child's government, as it probably must occasionally, be consis- 
 tent and firm. It will require but a few struggles from time to time 
 to convince the child that you mean business when you talk, and do 
 but follow nature itl your rules. 
 
 Thus, instead of the thorns so many plant in their own and in 
 their children's paths, there will be roses full of beauty and pleasure. 
 If you are continually nagging at a child, and saying " don't " to 
 every effort it makes to answer nature's call for exercise and inves- 
 tigation, you will reduce a healthy child to desperation. It ought 
 
The Child, 
 
 199 
 
 not to remain still, and it cannot without artificial restraint. You 
 also weaken your control, and bring it into contempt. Your temper 
 and that of the child will become irritated. Place the child where 
 it can play and roll and get dirty and make a noise, and let it alone 
 as much as is consistent with safety. It is a study well worthy of 
 careful attention to learn to save yourself from unnecessary interfer- 
 ence with the child, annoying to you and injurious to the little one. 
 
 A spoiled child is one unduly indulged, and is most often spoiled 
 by too much interference without the interference having been com- 
 plete. Thus a mother says "don't" and lets the child goon. It 
 would be a thousand times better never to have said the obnoxious 
 word. The child is annoyed and not controlled by such a course and 
 soon becomes a nuisance. 
 
 Activity in a child is to be expected. When it is not found there 
 is something wrong. The thing to do is to provide the youngster 
 with a legitimate means of exercising it. Say ** don't " to things that 
 must not be done and do not allow them to be done. But be careful 
 not to carry the word into unnecessary use, and make an earnest study 
 to have nature give this command for you. 
 
 The cry is the child's first means of making known its wants. A 
 certain amount of crying therefore is proper in a baby and probably 
 does it good in the way of exercise and expanding the lungs, but 
 unless guarded against, crying, as the child grows older, is likely to 
 degenerate into a tyranny destructive to both the happiness of mother 
 and child and in fact to the happiness of the household. The mother 
 should therefore keep a judicious watch,- not only on the child, but 
 on herself to prevent the *' cry " for food or attention proper in the 
 infant from becoming a characteristic of the older child used to obtain 
 its wishes when obstructed. The best means of preventing this result 
 is by not giving the child what it cries for and not doing what the 
 child cries to have done. In other words, never reward crying. This 
 policy carried out in the household will put a prompt stop to crying 
 as a tyranny. Children when hurt generally cry, and sympathy and 
 care should not be withheld on this account. 
 
 All things unnecessary for a baby are more or less harmful and 
 are often much more so in their ultimate effects than one might sup- 
 pose. Babies and young children are often held in the arms when 
 they are not feeding or at times are tossed or dandled. These practices 
 are dangerous. A child much held is more subject to catch cold than 
 if not so held, on account of the changes of temperature to which it 
 is subjected. A child dandled or tossed is liable to serious injuries 
 without any chance of compensating gain either in health of body 
 or mind. 
 
200 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 Several instances in the families of persons whom I know or know 
 of, have strikingly illustrated the dangers of tossing. One baby's 
 skull fractured, another thrown headfirst against the point of a gas 
 chandelier, two children made cripples, three humpbacks, and two 
 killed by tossing, is a serious list for a private experience. While the 
 number of injuries is small to the total number of children amongst 
 whom they occurred, it is still sufficient to lead us to avoid the 
 practice, since the child can by no possibility derive an advantage 
 from it. 
 
 A mother should avoid holding a child except when it is in the act 
 of suckling. Sometimes a baby will cry continuously for no under- 
 standable reason, and the mother or nurse dandles or holds the child 
 to quiet it. Such otherwise inexplicable uneasiness is occasionally 
 caused by thirst and usually occurs after feeding. A little water that 
 has been boiled and purified will correct such thirst and is not 
 infrequently an aid to a baby's digestion and a great consequent 
 benefit. 
 
 A most important thing with children is to keep them out-doors 
 as much as possible. A plant taken into a house soon becomes sickly ; 
 it loses its bright green and tends ever more and more to an anaemic 
 white. It requires twice as much care and can never remain healthy. 
 Thus it is with the child ; in-doors it will become pale, nervous, and 
 anaemic, it will require more care and never be healthy. To the 
 extent that a plant is deprived of air, to the same extent will it be 
 injured. The same result is seen in cooped-up children. Probably 
 they can stand such treatment less well, for to them oxygen is 
 necessary and carbonic acid gas noxious, which is not the case with 
 plants. 
 
 Health is the main thing to work for in the treatment of young 
 children. Cleanliness, plain food in reasonable variety, plenty of 
 exercise, and an out-door life are the essentials to health in 
 children. 
 
 Taking up these points in the order named, we have, first, 
 
 CI.EANI.INESS. 
 
 Young children should be cleaned thoroughly once a day and 
 babies twice a day. The climate of the residence and the con- 
 stitution of the child will vary the methods appropriate for accom- 
 plishing this result. For instance, dry rubbing with a bath once or 
 twice a week may be best for a thin-skinned, nervous child, while for 
 a stouter one, with perhaps some skin trouble, an alkaline bath twice 
 or even three times a day may b*e beneficial. In eczema bathing is 
 
The Child, 201 
 
 generally injurious. No rule can be laid down then as to how the 
 cleanliness is to be maintained. 
 
 A child requires less cleaning as it wears less clothes and more 
 cleaning as it wears more clothes. The emanations from our own 
 bodies are as a rule more hurtful, if not gotten rid of, than accumu- 
 lations of outside dirt. The privates of children should be washed 
 once a day and children as they grow older should be taught to wash 
 themselves in these parts always once a day. Great stress should 
 be laid on this point, for it is of much importance that this should be 
 done in after life. 
 
 The boy at about the age of ten should be taught to pull back 
 the prepuce or foreskin in washing. Sometimes there is a premature 
 secretion of smegma, or at others an accumulation of urine, under the 
 prepuce. Under these circumstances washing is always necessary. 
 The boy should be warned against handling or exposing the privates 
 at any other time except when absolutely essential for the calls of 
 nature. See Acton on The Reproductive Organs. 
 
 A climate that is warm and moist requires more washing to main- 
 tain cleanliness than one that is dry and cold. The skin in a cold 
 climate, especially when also moist, acts less and throws off less 
 waste than in a warm one. As a climate is cold and dry, so is its 
 capacity increased to encourage endosmose and exosmose of gases 
 to keep up the balance of healthy air between closed rooms and the 
 outside. 
 
 Thus the carbonic acid gas, etc. , coming from the body of a man 
 at a temperature of 98° in a closed room, with the outer air at 0°, 
 will by these means be passed through wooden or stone walls with- 
 out a visible aperture, and oxygen, etc., takes its place. 
 
 If the temperature be 20° or 30° lower outside the room than it 
 is in it, and the air be dry, the replacement of bad gases or those 
 deleterious to health by good ones, will be very rapid. The air in a 
 closed room, under favorable conditions of temperature and dryness, 
 often maintains its purity better than the air of the same room with a 
 window open does, under unfavorable hygrometric and thermometric 
 conditions. The tables showing the permeability of stone, wood, 
 etc., to the gases of the atmosphere and the rapidity with which, 
 under favorable circumstances, atmospheric balances can be estab- 
 lished and maintained through solid walls of these materials is 
 astonishing. On the other hand, the difficulty of proper air cleans- 
 ing, when conditions are unfavorable, is clear. 
 
 It is consoling to know that when the necessity for the trans- 
 mission of gases is greatest, it is easiest. 
 
 As it is with rooms, so it is with individuals. When the most 
 
202 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 attention is required to maintain cleanliness, that is, in moist, warm 
 weather, then is bathing easiest, while in very cold weather, bathing 
 need not be frequent, and if carried too far may even injure the con- 
 stitution. 
 
 In arctic regions winter bathing is practically impossible. 
 
 Baths of children should rarely be in cold water : lukewarm water 
 is best. Bathing may vary from a sponge off to an immersion. It 
 is essential to use judgment against overdoing the use of water. 
 
 The nails should be kept clean. The dirt in them, especially in 
 the nails of nurses and physicians, is a frequent vehicle for infection. 
 This fact, pointed out to children, will doubtless add to their interest 
 in this point. 
 
 The teeth should be carefully cleansed night and morning. A 
 great deal of suffering from the teeth in after years will thus be 
 avoided. But besides this, food and the secretions in the mouth, if 
 allowed to accumulate in and about the teeth will decay, and with 
 the decay of the teeth this induces, will produce ptomaines, inimical 
 to digestion, and consequentlj^ lowering to the vitality. 
 
 I have recently seen some reports of recurring diphtheria, that 
 is, where one or more attacks of diphtheria occurred in the same in- 
 dividual every year. These reports show that the diphtheritic 
 attacks were prevented by a careful cleansing with antiseptic fluids 
 of the mouth, throat, and nose. The checking of these results seems 
 to have been carefully done. The residence was the same, and in 
 several cases members of the family thus troubled, not taking the 
 precautions mentioned, were attacked, while the more susceptible 
 member or members taking the treatment were not. 
 
 These results indicate that the abnormal secretions or contents of 
 the nose, mouth, and throat are a breeding-place for any germs that 
 may be introduced into them, and that the resisting power of our 
 healthy blood and tissue against injurious germ life has little or no 
 influence in dead tissue or decaying matter. A child having catar- 
 rhal conditions, or defective teeth, or furred tongue should be encour- 
 aged to the greatest care in keeping the parts affected clean. Bed- 
 ding should be carefully aired every day, and whenever practicable, 
 that is when the sun shines, should be sunned in the open air an 
 hour or two a day. The sun is a great disinfector. Its direct action 
 is not only usually fatal to minute disease life, but is often so to the 
 germs also. 
 
 Plain healthy food, with fair variety and occasional change, 
 is of great importance to the child. A proper diet varies with 
 the constitution, activity, and residence of the child. Constitutions 
 differ in all respects and often in curious and exceptional ways. 
 
The Child. 203 
 
 Thus strawberries are generally a wholesome fruit, but with some 
 they cause a rash to break out, accompanied by a great deal of irrita- 
 tion. Milk is usually a wholesome and advantageous diet at all 
 ages, but quite frequently children shortly after weaning cannot 
 digest it well. With some it will turn acid and cause diarrhoea, 
 while with others nausea causes the milk to be thrown from the 
 stomach ; in other cases, it causes constipation. One of my own 
 children, now two years old, is unable to eat eggs or anything pre- 
 pared with them ; even a piece of cake with ^%^ in it will cause an 
 immediate attack of nausea and general malaise. 
 
 Tomatoes, generally friendly to the digestion, are not suited to 
 some, and occasionally even salivate persons eating them. Apples 
 eaten to any extent by some persons will bring on an increased flow 
 of urine. It is, however, with stimulants, narcotics, and medicines 
 that we notice oftenest the idiosyncrasies of constitution in man. 
 
 Some persons, instead of being narcotized by the usual doses of 
 such drugs as chloroform, opium, etc., are greatly excited. Some 
 can tolerate strong doses of mercury, arsenic, or other powerful 
 medicines, while others on taking even small doses suffer such 
 general injury as to counteract any good effects on a specific trouble 
 these drugs may produce. Some are poisoned by a whiff of air from 
 a poison oak plant, while others can roll in it without effect of visible 
 harm. There are certain general rules as to diet that should be fol- 
 lowed with children, but at the same time peculiarities of consti- 
 tution should be watched for, and food that is unsuitable to a child 
 in experience should not be given, though the general rule favor it. 
 
 What should compose a proper diet varies with the age of the 
 child, its activities and manner of life, and on the climate in which it 
 lives. These are matters for investigation and study which open an 
 ample field for the scientific investigation of the parents, and 
 especially of the mother. Too much importance cannot be attached 
 to the diet of children. A mistake will cause suffering to the child 
 and consequently to the parents, and may result in death. Food 
 absolutely requisite in a cold climate may bring on indigestion, 
 diarrhoea, and fever in a warm one. 
 
 The extraordinary mortality of infants during the excessive hot 
 periods of summer in such cities as New York is now accounted for 
 by the effects of the heat on the milk and food used for the babies as 
 well as on the babies themselves. Here then is another matter for 
 consideration. Milk exposed in warm weather is a food especially 
 liable to spoil. It turns acid and the babies' powers of assimilation 
 being already weakened by the heat, indigestion sets in to be fol- 
 lowed often by cholera infantum and death. Various single methods 
 
204 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 may be used to diminish this danger, such as care in seeing that the 
 milk is fresh and sweet when received and when given, boiling the 
 milk, putting lime-water in when received, etc. The first should 
 always be done. The cow or cows from which the milk is received 
 should be examined occasionally. Cows are frequently subject to 
 diseases common to man, especially to tuberculosis. As milk is a 
 good vehicle for disease germs caution should be used on this point. 
 For the same reason some track should be kept of the health of the 
 family furnishing the milk. The best road out of this difiiculty is 
 to keep your own cows, but the means of the famil}^ may not justify 
 this. 
 
 After we have taken all the pains and pleasures of creating a 
 human being in our own likeness we cannot be too careful of its life. 
 At the same time we must remember that the child's future success 
 depends on its character. This can only be well and forcibly devel- 
 oped by throwing the child as much as possible on its owm resources 
 and building up its own self-reliance and self-respect. Coddling and 
 care by others are inimical to these results. It will not be easy to 
 draw the line between proper care of the child and care that will 
 injure its future life. It is a matter that should be looked into, and 
 the care appropriate for children will doubtless vary with different 
 individuals and places. 
 
 Children may often derive advantage from a temporary change of 
 climate and scene. But travelling with children in general is to be 
 avoided. The risks of exposure, changes in diet, dangers of infec- 
 tion, etc., are very great. 
 
 Numbers of cases of the loss of children from diphtheria and 
 zymotic diseases through exposure while being dragged about by 
 parents in their pleasure or sight-seeing tours have come to my notice. 
 
 A child may grow up cautious or careless according to influences 
 around them and these are largely the result of the activities of asso- 
 ciates. It may not be amiss to point out to young people as an 
 inducement to good manners in the home that they are never so well 
 thought of if they treat their family or friends with disrespect. It is a 
 disrespect to themselves. The reading of young people is an import- 
 ant matter. Kvery effort should be made to keep it on a high plane. 
 While doing this it is essential to consider the development of 
 the child's mind and to suit the matter to the machinery for its 
 working up. 
 
 Exercise is an absolute essential to the welfare of children. This 
 exercise should be in the open air as much as possible. While 
 the dictum admits of no amendment it is important to have a clear 
 idea of the object of exercise, so that the abuse of it or its usurpation 
 
The Child. 205 
 
 of the energies of life may not take place. Exercise of the body is a 
 means and not an end. The body without exercise, especially in 
 the young, does not remain healthy. Without a healthy body the 
 full possibilities of the mind cannot be realized ; consequently to use 
 the mind, as humanity is now constituted, a good body is necessary. 
 The true object of exercise is then to develop or maintain a body 
 that will carry the mind and enable it to exhibit its work and im- 
 prove its quality, and to reproduce this mind with its accompanying 
 body. 
 
 Physical education to insure physical perfection is good, but it is 
 not realized when the physique detracts from the mental or reproduc- 
 tive powers. These may all be considered physical powers, as they 
 are, but they are here separated for convenience. From these reasons 
 any physical education for superiority in acrobatic exercises, etc., is 
 exceedingly liable to abuse. We do not want prize fighters or circus 
 actors. The improvement of the race and of life is not on that line. 
 It is in the mental line, and the mind will triumph over brute force. 
 The mind only requires a vigor and vitality in the body to allow it 
 to do its work. The best means for a proper physical education is 
 the child's self-learning acquired in sports and games. The develop- 
 ment of the body is in such sports more even, the exercise is out- 
 doors, and excessive exertion, while quite possible, is not so likely 
 to occur as in gymnastics or feats of strength. Interest, discipline, 
 combination, etc. , are also cultivated in games. 
 
 Hard work of body or mind should not be permitted in children. 
 Excesses of this kind, like all excesses, are especially injurious to 
 the child. 
 
 The vigor necessary for development is abstracted by premature 
 overwork, and the child thus abused is either arrested at a stage of 
 evolution lower than it would otherwise have reached, or fatally 
 injured in its future reproductive powers ; perhaps not prevented 
 altogether from reproduction, but so devitalized as to be unable to 
 transmit superiority of body or mind. 
 
 A colt worked hard when young is ruined, or at least does not 
 become so good a horse in all respects as would otherwise have been 
 the case. An animal so treated does not develop so well, does not 
 live so long, and a precocity — say of speed — is developed at the 
 expense of the future matured horse. Human beings we have less 
 positive data about. But it is a subject of general remark that the 
 youthful prodigies and acrobats of the circus are of short life, and 
 very rarely are athletes of any mark in manhood. So also the prodi- 
 gies of precocity in the school are not usually those who take the 
 prizes of life at maturity. Some exceptions, such as the celebrated 
 
2o6 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 Pascal, must occur to the thoughful ; but even this remarkable chi 
 and remarkable man is not so much an exception after all. His 
 powers commenced to wane before thirty, and before his death he 
 was at least partly insane. He died prematurely old at thirty-nine, 
 and left no progeny. 
 
 John Stuart Mill is more nearly a complete exception to my views. 
 This eminent thinker was both a precocious child and a celebrated 
 man. He was bom in a city, in I^ondon, and lived to a good old 
 age. He, however, failed to perpetuate his mental abilities in chil- 
 dren. His father was a strong and celebrated man, and he came 
 from the country in Scotland. According to my theories, had the 
 son remained in the country, been discouraged in precocity, and 
 reserved a sufficient energy to perpetuate his superiorities, the Mill 
 family might to-day be achieving greater things than any they have 
 done, and possess no end of future possibilities. 
 
 Many of the eminent men of the past showed a development of 
 talent or genius at an age which we must indeed admit as precocious. 
 Alexander the Great, for instance, commenced his experience in 
 government at i6, and his career of conquest at 20. He died at 32, 
 leaving a child bom after his death. This infant was murdered 
 when 12 years of age, William Pitt, the second son of the great 
 Pitt, was Chancellor of the Exchequer at 24, and Prime Minister at 
 25. He died at 47 without children. 
 
 The rarity with which those showing great precocity of talent 
 have left children, or children who became eminent, is to be noted. 
 Precocity is consequently not to be encouraged, and never to be 
 artificially produced. 
 
 The pressure of reading and study upon the eyes is now so great 
 that many children suffer through life from the consequences of 
 imprudence in the use of these windows of the soul. The rule should 
 be never to allow reading or study at dawn, twilight, or by a bad 
 light. No study should be allowed by lamplight, gas, etc., until 
 twelve or fifteen years of age, and then only in moderation. Studies 
 necessitating before twelve night work may from that fact be 
 deemed excessive and should be reduced. 
 
 Reasonable body and mind exercise is usually what a child takes 
 of its own volition when under the proper influences. In mental 
 exercise it is well to keep the fact before us that the child first under- 
 stands or grasps the homogeneous, and only afterward the hetero- 
 geneous ; consequently, generalizations should follow the acquirement 
 of the facts upon which they are based. Plain as is the propriety of 
 following this order, frequent violations of it are observable in 
 ordinary education. 
 
The Child. 207 
 
 In considering the treatment of the child the general course of 
 its evolution should govern. In the foetus all the vitality goes to 
 growth. In the baby nearly all the vitality has the same destiny. 
 In the child this still remains true, and it is not until natinre has 
 completed the reproductive powers of the individual that she diverts 
 vitality for a great superiority in any other line. Vitality thus 
 diverted prematurely is taken at a heavy cost. 
 
 Children of the two sexes should be brought up together. The 
 two sexes must meet and live together in after life, and I believe that 
 they should never be separated as is so often done in schools. The 
 separation of the sexes is invariably followed by awkwardness and 
 uncomfortableness when a child so separated is brought in contact 
 with the opposite sex. The reproductive instincts, swelling in the 
 bud long before they bloom, drive girls and boys separated from each 
 other, with the whips of a natural curiosity as to each other, to think 
 and do many improper things. 
 
 The natural curiosity when they are separated turns to a morbid 
 form, both sexes become foolish about each other, and the results too 
 often are self-abuse, escapades, and elopements. The girls are often 
 misled and are ruined beyond repair, and the boys often slink into 
 houses of prostitution to gratify a natural and healthy curiosity that, 
 with more familiarity and daily contact with good girls, would never 
 have taken so dangerous a form. Girls and boys brought up together 
 in the common schools, as far as I have observed, seem to look at 
 each other as a matter of course, and play and romp together with 
 little if any unclean language, thought, or deed. On the other hand, 
 boys separated from girls' society and girls in carefully kept boarding 
 schools become possessed with a romantic folly about the opposite 
 sex, and while so possessed are easily led away to error. 
 
 It is important to impress children with the danger of intimacies 
 with strangers, kissing and caressing unknown persons or children, 
 using clothes, sheets, towels, handkerchiefs, etc., used by other 
 people. The reason of this is that many kinds of disease are trans- 
 mitted by germs or by already developed minute organisms. These 
 may be carried in the clothing or in articles used, and thus infect 
 persons subsequently using them ; or the transfer of the disease 
 may take place by actual touch. In this class of diseases are small- 
 pox, scarlet-fever, diphtheria, measles, chicken-pox, whooping-cough, 
 cholera, gonorrhoea, and various skin troubles, and, most of all, con- 
 sumption and syphilis. Consumption, fortunately, is not so easily 
 transferred as the others. Syphilis is a deadly and terrible malady. 
 One can never know when its march is done. Even death to the 
 individual will not stop it, for it will march on in the children, 
 
2o8 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 directy or indirectly, if happily the children be born alive, for a large 
 proportion of conceptions by or in syphilitics are not bom alive. 
 
 In these matters a consistent caution should be followed. The 
 care taken should be systematic, reasonable, not excessive, yet 
 great. 
 
 A schoolmate of mine lost his eye from a gonorrhoeal attack 
 caused by a soiled towel with which he wiped his face. Thus vene- 
 real disease may endanger the eyes though no venereal license be 
 practised. I personally know of one case where syphilis was given 
 by a kiss. There are undoubtedly transmissions of syphilis without 
 sexual intercourse, and the kiss is of these secondary means the most 
 frequent spreader of this fell malady. The importance in care as to 
 syphilis may be understood by the number of its victims in the com- 
 munity. 
 
 One writer estimates 25 per cent, of the population to be more or 
 less tainted with it. A friend of mine, who is a physician in large 
 practice, estimates the proportion injured by it in one way or another 
 to be from 35 per cent, to 40 per cent. Both estimates seem to me 
 excessive, and may arise from the proportion of this disease or its 
 sequelae to all others treated. An estimate founded on correct data 
 as indicated, need bear no true relation to the condition of the whole 
 population. 
 
 The value of care and education on this subject is shown by the 
 frequency of venereal diseases in the armies of Europe as compared 
 to the care taken to guard against them. 
 The treatment of venereal diseases is annually : 
 I in 19 in the Prussian army. 
 I '' 10 *' '' French 
 I " 3 " '' English " 
 
 The care and education on this subject are greatest in the Prussian 
 army and almost nil in the English. 
 
 Unclean water-closets are also a source of infection, especially in 
 venereal diseases. In cases of epidemics of typhoid, typhus, or 
 cholera public water-closets should be avoided. Care in looking into 
 the health of playmates and nurses should be taught children, and 
 the parents must not sleep in the matter. 
 
 One thing in the treatment of children and young persons is of 
 great importance to their health, and especially to their moral well- 
 being ; it is to give each one a separate bed to sleep in and, if 
 possible, a separate room or compartment. 
 
 (See Acton on The Reproductive Organs, p. 54, sixth edition.) 
 
 The sleeping apartments and arrangements bear a direct relation 
 to the development of modesty. 
 
The Child, 209 
 
 One thing is always to be remembered in the treatment of 
 children. You must gain their confidence. While holding up to 
 them a high standard for all attainments you should make it clear to 
 children that you understand their humanity and their liability at 
 times to fall below the standard set. Our standard should always 
 be progressive — that is, higher than our own lives have attained. 
 Such a standard can only be come at with struggle and effort. 
 
 These inevitable struggles toward perfection can not, in the nature 
 of humanity, be each time completely successful, otherwise humanity 
 would be very different from what it is. With a high standard it is 
 consequently more than ever necessary to commend it with a sym- 
 pathy to the child and I believe also with a confession of the 
 difficulties you yourself have experienced only to overcome with 
 effort. If this be not done, then any proper standard for our event- 
 ual efforts being too high for immediate realization by the human 
 child, the child will feel a shame and disgrace at its inevitable lapses 
 and will keep them secret. What the child needs in such failures is 
 the sympathy and help of its mentor. 
 
 Our efforts should ever be towards a condition superior to any- 
 thing hitherto attained, but the road to it is the human one over at 
 best a cobble-stone of imperfection. 
 
 This must be recognized and admitted, otherwise we do but 
 prepare ourselves for an inevitable reaction such as has thus far in- 
 variably accompanied the high aims of man. These remarks apply 
 especially to morality. The attitude of the parent to the child should 
 be in the following line. 
 
 I teach you, my child, what is good and what is error. I have 
 not been perfect and I know much of what I teach by bitter 
 experience and the observation of the still more bitter experience of 
 others. I hope to help you to avoid my own mistakes. In this 
 undertaking it is your welfare I consider, and my effort is to make 
 you, my new self, better than I, your old self. You cannot be per- 
 fect. It is toward perfection that you should work. Fear not then 
 when you fail to come to me for counsel. Be not ashamed when you 
 do wrong to come to me for help. You, my child, are my own life 
 renewed. You are the best part of me. Then believe always that 
 you are my hope. Your secrets I will never betray. Your interests, 
 your growth, your achievements are mine. Let now your inexperi- 
 ence profit as far as possible from my age. My heart beats in your 
 heart and my hopes grow new with yours. Consider me what I am, 
 a reserve force to cover your retreats where these may unfortunately 
 be necessary, and to push home your victories when these you 
 achieve. 
 14 
 
2IO The Conquest of Death, 
 
 Exaggerate nothing. Exaggeration is sure to bring reaction. 
 Nowhere will it be more felt than in the yoimg trusting child. The 
 idea should not be given that the parent knows everything, for this 
 brings the child to the parent instead of to nature. The inquiring 
 child should always, when possible, be taken direct to nature. You 
 will yourself always find something to learn, and you should admit 
 it to the child to encourage its inquiries. 
 
 In the treatment of the child, as has been said, it should be 
 clearly formulated as well as indefinitely felt that the new-bom babe 
 must receive services and attention in no way connected with its own 
 services — for of these it is incapable. 
 
 Conversely, the interest of society and ultimately of the individual 
 also demands that the rewards to the grown person should correspond 
 with their merits and with their services rendered. In the first 
 stages of life the conduct of the parent toward the child must be 
 according to afiection and generosity ; on the other hand, the 
 conduct of society toward the mature individual must be according 
 to justice and to render to him by the measure he renders to it. 
 
 The parents, while recognizing the first necessity, should so 
 govern themselves and their children that these, when going out 
 into the world, will be prepared to meet the contest of life upon the 
 lines of justice. 
 
 Society cannot live much less progress in treating the individual 
 in a general way upon the lines of generosity which are an absolute 
 essential to the treatment of the babe by the parent. Therefore a 
 grown person leaving the family for the fight of life with the expec- 
 tation of being treated in the generous policy appropriate to the 
 child is handicapped. If he or she succeeds, it must be by learning 
 and avoiding the error. It is to be supposed that the failure of many 
 persons is due to the impression of youth, unmodified in the family 
 experience, that subsistence, kindness, and reward in the world are 
 matters of generosity and not of justice. 
 
 When children come to the age of puberty and commence the 
 change that is to make them men and women, they have arrived at a 
 crisis in their lives. At this age the body grows rapidly both in size 
 and weight, and the vital forces in great activity go to the perfecting 
 of the reproductive organs. It is not expedient to press mental 
 efforts during this period. On the contrary, 3'oung people should 
 be kept out-of-doors in light occupation or sports to a greater extent 
 than usual while they are passing fi-om the age of children through 
 the development of the reproductive power to the age of manhood 
 and womanhood. Examinations and extra pressures are often 
 allowed to push young people iX this time. It is always at the 
 expense of their future health and vitality. 
 
The Child, 211 
 
 As reproducing an improved being should be our aim, it being 
 the grandest achievement of which we are capable, so a course inter- 
 fering with this is a fundamental error. 
 
 In the treatment of children nothing is more important than to care- 
 fully look after their welfare at the age of puberty. Girls having a 
 sure sign of this in the appearance of the menses their age of puberty 
 can be accurately established. It is true that the descent of the ^%% in 
 some women is accompanied by no sign, this fact being known by 
 the pregnancy of women without a menstrual flow, but such cases 
 are like five-fingered men, albinos, etc., too rare to require attention. 
 
 The boy's age of puberty is, however, not so easily known, and 
 must be watched for more carefully. Usually the hair commences to 
 grow on the lip and chin, the voice to change, and a self-conscious- 
 ness appears that requires judicious treatment. If the course 
 of the chapter on education has been followed, and the boy and 
 girl understand something of the functions that are taking such 
 a hold on them, and comprehend the dangers of abuse of these, and, 
 above all, realize their grandetu: and importance, less trouble will 
 be experienced in inducing the young to a wise life at this time. 
 
 After the age of puberty childhood is over. The reproductive 
 instinct then dominates life. It is for us to say whether this domi- 
 nation shall be for evil in lust, dissipation, prostitution, and self- 
 abuse, or for good in marriage and children with the healthy and 
 renewed life these bring. 
 
 With the robust this is the choice, but it must be said that in our 
 in-door and sedentary civilization there are numbers who without 
 strong health are also without an aggressive reproductive instinct. 
 These are our weaklings. Extermination threatens their ill-balanced 
 constitutions and they on their part court extermination by repressing 
 or perverting these our grandest powers. The repression or perver- 
 sion only hastens the end. Such people rarely enjoy good health ; 
 insanity and death ever dog their heels. 
 
 For the wise man there is but one choice — the wife, the child, the 
 happy home. Renewed and immortal there, such a man may smile 
 at old age and threatening death. The time that furrows and 
 whitens him is but developing and bringing on his new self in his 
 children. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 HINTS TO THE HUSBAND. 
 
 MARRIAGE is the official sanction of the union of two lives in 
 one by means of the child. By marriage alone is the man 
 or woman complete. 
 
 The proper treatment of a wife in the almost entire absence of 
 any education as to the duties, greatness, importance, and joys of 
 matrimony is a conduct now come at by intuition alone. That 
 intuitions alone are not sufficient in a large number of cases we 
 now see. 
 
 Religious forms and dogmas which have supplied the lack of a 
 rational education in this, the most important matter of our lives and 
 of our future, have lost much of their hold on our actions. Thus 
 troubles in matrimony are more prevalent than they were formerly 
 in America, and are becoming still more so. It is indeed true that 
 experience is our only real teacher, but may we not learn how to 
 obtain that experience and have our attention drawn to what will 
 occur, so that we may see the facts when they come in their true 
 light. 
 
 Every one who is married can appreciate the difficulty of making 
 clear the difference that takes place in one's life through matrimony. 
 In this relation in its perfection the individual is at once halved and 
 doubled— halved in that the individual is but a part of a new life 
 made by the union, and doubled in that two lives thereafter make the 
 united pair. 
 
 In the new and grand relation formed by the union of marriage 
 the first thing of importance is to become acquainted with one's 
 better half. Before marriage this is impossible, because you have 
 no other half. The intimacy of marriage will introduce the husband 
 to the wife ; nothing else can. Therefore the great voluntary step 
 of our lives, marriage, should at first be so regulated as to prevent 
 any interference with or drawback to the intimacy and communing 
 of the united ones, lest the union should be less complete or be slow 
 in its growth. 
 
 No man or woman can be complete until they create. Marriage 
 
Hints to the Husband, 213 
 
 which provides for creation in its joys and mysteries is in a sense a 
 birth. It is the birth from the single man and maid of the united 
 couple, husband and wife. As the first influences on the child are 
 the most lasting, and do most toward moulding its character, so also 
 the first influences on the bride, as on the husband, are the most im- 
 portant in marriage, for it is these that do most to fix the destiny of 
 the union. 
 
 In the newly married there is an opening of the heart, a 
 tenderness and exchange of confidence that should be given every 
 encouragement. It cannot have full sway under the eye of friends 
 and relatives, for they will criticise and appear at inopportune 
 occasions. 
 
 Near relatives especially seem at these times exacting and un- 
 reasonable in regard to the new member of the family, and often 
 enough suggest doubts that become the seeds of much unhappiness ; 
 or, while the beings are adjusting themselves to the great change of 
 marriage, interfere with the heart and reason of the interested ones 
 in moments of the almost inevitable friction that occur, and with 
 very good intentions do incalculable harm. 
 
 The custom of a bridal trip after marriage, however it originated, 
 is clearly a good one. Understanding the why, you will be able 
 to make this trip one full of good results. The voyage in most cases 
 should be to a quiet place or places with no excessive fatigues. In 
 all cases it should be without relatives and where relatives and 
 friends will not be seen. The husband at this time should not 
 forget the embarrassments of the new relation his wife has under- 
 taken, remembering that she in receiving the ring, the emblem of 
 eternity, has given him her life. Her honor and happiness are in 
 the husband's hands. The separation from her old associations 
 and the fulfilment of the wife's duties cause a great strain upon 
 the delicate sensibilities of an inexperienced wife so recently a 
 maiden. The husband should be tender and should not abuse his 
 privileges. 
 
 It is too delicate a matter, according to our present popular 
 opinion, to enter into any useful detail as to the more intimate rela- 
 tions of marriage. In fact the rules and laws of Solon, Moses, The 
 Mishna, Mahomet etc. , as to these matters have not done much good. 
 Recent researches on this point, such as those of Acton, are equally 
 unsatisfactory as a positive guide. They are all, however, useful and 
 suggestive. 
 
 To lay down rules for the marriage embrace of a camel-driver, as 
 distinguished from a sailor, to exact heavy duties from the vigorous 
 idle man and relieve altogether the sage and scholar, as all these 
 
214 ^^ Conquest of Death, 
 
 authorities more or less do, would be to perpetuate the idle and 
 worthless, and to exterminate the wise. 
 
 It is sufiScient to say that excess in marital privileges is bad, and 
 that the true and grand exercise of the reproductive function is for 
 reproduction. Anything beyond this, any use without hope of 
 fertility, is to be scanned with suspicion. The presumption is against 
 it. It may be said here that the marital privilege of the husband 
 should not be exercised for six weeks after the birth of the child nor 
 during the menstrual flow. 
 
 There is no need to make a bridal trip costly. Servants should 
 never be taken on a wedding journey ; they are as dangerous as 
 relatives — nay, probably more so. 
 
 The husband should take his wife after the bridal trip to a home. 
 A boarding-house, a hotel, or the house of the parents on either side 
 should be excluded. A home, if it is only a tent or a shanty, is an 
 essential to a marriage. A married couple can live as cheaply 
 and in as much comfort, as to worldly matters, in a home of their 
 own as in a hotel or boarding-house. The comfort and happiness 
 possible in a home is altogether and completely impossible anywhere 
 else. In a home only can the husband and wife really taste the fall 
 joys and greatness of marriage. A home will make both greater, 
 nobler, more useful, and more successful than any half life in detest- 
 able boarding-houses or hotels. 
 
 In the formative years and until the first children are born, there 
 are few good reasons for the permanent introduction into the house 
 of a relative— none for the introduction of a stranger. 
 
 The development of the children and their improvement upon 
 the original stock depend on the development and the use of your 
 faculties and your wife's. These can be most fully developed under 
 the full stimulus of a sound home life. 
 
 Outsiders, whether friends or relatives, cannot be introduced at 
 the commencement into the home for a length of time without 
 endangering it. The direct mischief possible is great, especially 
 when the person, whether male or female, brought in is attractive. 
 But this danger is not the only one ; it is the indirect effects which 
 are to be most feared. The presence of outsiders has two tenden- 
 cies : the first is to lessen the full home life by lessening the confi- 
 dences and the freedom of man and wife, — it is a constraint ; and 
 secondly, to make misunderstandings between the married ones 
 tend to quarrels, and quarrels that become difficult to make up. 
 
 Pride in holding up one's self-esteem before an outsider has 
 caused many an unhealed breach in married life. 
 
 As no one is perfect, not even a new wife or a new husband, so 
 
Hints to the Husband, 215 
 
 perfection cannot be presumed ; consequently occasional criticism in 
 personal or household matters should be expected in the adjustments 
 of the newly married and probably later on in their united lives. 
 
 These criticisms, all advice, misunderstandings, and embraces 
 should never be before witnesses. The sting is out of a senseless 
 squabble if no one knows about it ; while on the other hand the 
 joys and caresses of the married excite the comment and ridicule of 
 the world when improperly thrust into public view. Therefore, keep 
 your family life strictly private. 
 
 A husband, conscious of his headship in the family and of his 
 power, should not cavil over small things. When a domestic squall 
 breaks, as it occasionally may, it is usually good policy to follow the 
 practice of shipmasters in open roadsteads when storms come up — 
 that is to put quietly to sea under storm sail, and cruise in deep 
 water far from the rocks and breakers till all is quiet again. 
 
 The first years at least should be spent by husband and wife to- 
 gether, and free from the dangers of friends or relatives in the house- 
 hold. Later, when children have made marriage a real union, more 
 freedom in these matters may be allowed. It is, however, never a 
 wise plan to introduce to the intimacy of your home life young men. 
 
 By intimacy is meant the entry into the home at all times, and 
 social intercourse with the wife without check. Women at certain 
 times have moments when they are scarcely themselves. At such 
 times designing men may ruin a really good woman. It is not only 
 the actual ruin of the wife which may take place through such im- 
 prudence, but the confidence of the husband in the wife may be 
 undermined and his peace of mind destroyed, even though the wife 
 be really innocent of any impropriety. The happiness of the home 
 may thus be more or less cut down, and perhaps altogether destroyed. 
 
 A home destroyed is the wreck of the wife, and in many cases of 
 the husband also. Such an event is a blot in life that will not out. 
 Such extraordinary penalties demand a withdrawal from risks. As 
 the pleasures to be gained bear no sort of relation to the risks in- 
 curred, it is clearly a bad business proposition to be careless in these 
 matters. Nothing said in this connection should be taken as advis- 
 ing a mewing up of the wife, nor should a course of conduct be pur- 
 sued likely to destroy her own self-respect and self-reliance, for on 
 these your honor rests. Do not place your wife in temptation, but 
 lead her by just reason from the first to avoid these risks herself and 
 thus keep her reputation free from the treacherous stabs of scandal. 
 
 In case a man becomes persistent in attentions, it is advisable to 
 have a plain talk with him, not necessarily of a quarrelsome nature ; 
 say, if you like, what you have at stake, and be plain and firm in re- 
 
2 1 6 . The Conquest of Death, 
 
 fusing to allow the attentions to continue. In such an open approac 
 to any one, you will find yourself thrice armed. You are right and 
 he is wrong. You have on your side your own force, the opinion of 
 the best, and the necessity society is under to maintain the purity of 
 the home for the reproduction and the life of the race. He will stand 
 alone, weakened by his own sense of being an intending thief You 
 need, therefore, never fear to be open in the matter, being careful 
 never to throw doubt on your wife, but to confine yourselves to the 
 motives of the man. It is to be hoped that such a necessity may 
 never come to you ; but spying, crossness, etc. , arising from a proper 
 jealousy, are bad. Unconsciously you show your skeleton to the 
 world, while taking no sound remedy to get rid of it. Thus the 
 reputation of your wife, and consequently of yourself, suffers, her 
 strength for future occasion is weakened, and you knife your 
 happiness. 
 
 There is another way of dealing with intruding men — by a sound 
 thrashing or death. Kxtremity is the only excuse for such a course. 
 Observation will show that women, whose husbands take this action, 
 become more disposed to flirtation than before. They lure men on 
 careless of consequence, or perhaps secretly pleased in the power of 
 making men run risks for them, or of the notoriety which a conflict 
 gives society of their attractions. 
 
 If a man be married to a woman, unable or unwilling to guard 
 and insure the paternity of the children in all her conduct, the best 
 remedy in our society is divorce. Still it must be admitted that a 
 husband whose character and courage mean death to intruders, will 
 probably have more respect shown toward his preserves than one of 
 an indifierent and careless disposition. 
 
 As the husband demands and must have chastity in his wife, he 
 should be most careful to set her no bad example in his own manners 
 in this respect. There is an old saying that the first person who will 
 know of a man's sexual infidelity is his wife. Certainly such a dis- 
 covery by a wife, as women are now educated, would cause her to 
 feel a just resentment. Such conduct on the part of the man would, 
 therefore, be likely to cause unhappiness in the home and weaken 
 the family tie. For this reason, and on account of the liability to 
 introduce venereal disease in the family, the husband should main- 
 tain strict chastity to all beside his wife. 
 
 Infidelity on the part of the husband weakens his love of his wife 
 as well as his wife's love of him. It almost invariably leads to 
 sexual excess, and consequently tends to sterility. 
 
 A wife who loves can not be expected to be indifferent to sexual 
 license in her husband. It is exceedingly likely to cause trouble. 
 
Hints to the Husband, 217 
 
 Rachel and Leah, the wives of Jacob, in their desire to increase his 
 family, sent each one her maid-servant to him and gloried in their 
 conceptions. Such generous rivalry can hardly now be counted on. 
 
 The husband may well remember that the heart is a realm and 
 kingdom of which one may be sole monarch. He should aim at 
 such dominion and prize and maintain it when secured. As he aims 
 to be absolute pontiff and king in the heart of his wife, so he should 
 make the wife, as a means to his own end, the absolute queen of his 
 own heart. 
 
 The home which you establish should by all means be in the 
 country. The rapid transportation we now have enables a man 
 whose business is in the city to live in the country. It is frequently 
 the case that places in the country fifteen or twenty miles from a 
 city office are reached more quickly and easily thanplaces within 
 the city itself. This hint is given because the rewards of the world 
 are now so largely found in cities, that it cannot be anticipated but 
 that many of my descendants, if I am so fortunate as to have many, 
 will be lured into the towns. In fact, in many occupations, such as 
 the law or medicine, a man can find opportunity for the highest use 
 of his faculties in cities only, and ought consequently to have his 
 headquarters in one of them. Would that it were otherwise. Cities 
 are destroyers. From the country pour the thousands of recruits 
 into the city. Its great men and its leaders are aliens strong from 
 the fresh, pure air of nature. The recruit comes strong, but is 
 weakened and in his children still more weakened, which goes on 
 progressively with the end, death to the family, as certain as death 
 is to the individual body. The city convert thus condemns himself 
 to extermination, while had he remained upon his native fields he 
 might through his children and descendants have reached the perfect 
 race and lived on forever. 
 
 In a paper read before the Section on Theory and Practice of the 
 New York Academy of Medicine, March 19, 1889, by Henry Ling 
 Taylor, M.D., appear the following thoughts : 
 
 "There is little doubt that the specialization of occupations and pursuits 
 which is such a marked feature of modern civilized life, notably in our cities, 
 has been in some respects a detriment to our physical development. If the 
 hard worker is now less frequently starved outright, he is perhaps more often 
 deprived of sufiBcient light and wholesome air, and his physical and mental 
 activities restricted to a narrow range. In the commercial and head-working 
 classes excessive competition stimulates, and often necessitates a war of wits» 
 which is usually associated with sedentary habits, and frequently results in 
 starvation of the tissues, in a spindling or flabby physical type, diminished 
 fertility, and stunted asymmetrical offspring. When we come to analyze it, we 
 find that modern city life among all classes, in spite of much superficial variety. 
 
2 1 8 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 is characterized by nothing so much as narrowness if not monotony, and 
 is as true of the leisure classes as of any. What can possibly exceed in inade- 
 quacy of n euro-muscular experience the routine activities of a man or woman 
 of fashion ? Probably nothing ; but many of our professional and business 
 men, working in narrow grooves, under continuous strain, and innocent of the 
 rudiments of a common-sense hygiene, many of our overworked women and 
 high-pressure children, certainly run a good second." 
 
 Thus it is probable that, contrary to the generally accepted 
 opinion, city life is really more narrow and belittling than that of 
 the country. 
 
 Samuel Hough Terry has written a small book called Controlling 
 Sex in Generation. In it he maintains, amongst other things, that 
 a danger signal to families is the reversal of the rule and the pro- 
 duction of more daughters than sons. His statements go to show 
 that accompanying this is a diminished virility of the males bom 
 and also a diminished vitality. It is not until about the age of 
 puberty that this is reversed. At that time the female deaths 
 become for a time slightly higher. 
 
 Well-to-do families in cities continually tend to the production of 
 female children. The male children which they bring to maturity 
 seem to amount to little in life and to be effeminate. In the chapter 
 on '* Marriage" some further examination of this matter is had. 
 Terry's statements require close scrutiny. 
 
 In another place, cities as places of residence are again discussed. 
 The paramount importance of judging rightly as to the situation of 
 the home, makes it advisable to neglect no point of view when con- 
 sidering so vital a question. The weight of testimony appears to me 
 to be against cities, but the intense nervous strain of these great 
 centres, one of the things to which I object, may be the means, nay, 
 the only road by which humanity is to make further progress. At 
 the risk of repetition, city life deserves some further consideration. 
 
 The ranks of the great are filled from the country. It is seldom 
 in our age that a man of prominence in any country is of city birth 
 and rearing. Whether this is owing to a diminished virility and 
 vitality in city children, to the artificial life and artificial landscape 
 and surroundings, or to some other cause, the fact remains that a 
 country life, during the formative period, is almost a necessity to 
 greatness. Taking up average life, we must conclude that, other 
 things being equal, a boy reared in the country will achieve more 
 than a boy reared in the city. 
 
 Premature sexual development is also a certain danger in city- 
 reared children. This probably is nature's first notice of approach- 
 ing sterility. Sexual precocity is a sign of weakness. It is the sick 
 
Hints to the Husband. 219 
 
 tree that bears the first fruit — a fruit poor in color, size, and flavor. 
 So, frequently persons with constitutional disease and incapable of 
 procreating healthy offspring hasten their own death by sexual 
 excesses. 
 
 There seem, however, to be exceptions to the exterminating in- 
 fluences of cities. The Jews certainly for a long period of time have 
 resided almost exclusively in towns and cities. Whether their city 
 population has been recruited from country towns, I am unable to 
 say, but it is evident that a sound family life with domestic tastes 
 amongst women have a counteracting effect upon the generally un- 
 favorable conditions of cities. The Jews certainly maintain them- 
 selves very well, although they are par excellence a city population. 
 With this race male births exceed the female to a greater extent than 
 is normal in civilized countries. 
 
 While unlike the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, etc., this people 
 has escaped extermination ; it has not progressed as it should have 
 done beyond the races that have come up around it. The last 
 Federal census shows the reproductive condition of the high-class 
 Jews in America to be weakening. The failure of this race to 
 dominate the world indicates that their superior families or breeds 
 must have been exterminated like those of the lost civilized peoples. 
 
 The traveller, W. W. Rockhill, tells us that the Chinese of the 
 populous province of Ssu-ch'-uan live altogether in towns of about 
 10,000 inhabitants, going out to their farm work. As this con- 
 dition has prevailed from time immemorial we may perceive that 
 at least a non-progressive population may survive in full reproductive 
 vigor, a city centralization with country work. The experience of 
 Europe in the forced concentration of the agricultural population into 
 towns during the feudal age, which still largely persists in most of 
 the continental districts, shows the same thing. The more purely 
 agricultural and country life of the English and early American 
 yeomanry deserves our study and investigation. While not produ- 
 cing a population that has averaged in individual genius anywhere 
 near that of Greece, or of the Italian republics (largely city popula- 
 tions), it has given the world a strong and materialistic progressive 
 race never before equalled. Out of sixty odd millions we do not 
 produce as much known mental genius in a given time as came 
 from the sixty odd thousands of the city of Florence, and nothing 
 at all compared to the two hundred odd thousands of free Greeks. 
 
 If Terry's suggestions be true, that life in a city by parents will 
 diminish the strength in all ways of the children, we have strong 
 reasons indeed for refusing to live in one. I believe that city life has 
 not only a dwarfing effect on the intellect and physical force of the 
 
2 20 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 children born in cities, but also upon those who come into them To 
 reside, who were born in the country. In the country we may take 
 the hand of Nature, in the city everything is artificial. In the one 
 case, Truth predominates, for Nature is Truth ; in the other, all is 
 artifice, and for the most part far from the truth indeed. 
 
 The death-rate in cities is much higher than in the country. 
 This is especially the case with young children. In some cities, as 
 New York for instance, this death-rate is so high that, were the city 
 population dependent upon its own reproductive powers, it would 
 soon disappear. The laws of health are becoming better understood 
 and sanitary measures are being everywhere undertaken on a 
 large or small scale, so that some of these disadvantages are being 
 overcome. 
 
 At the present time and upon our present incomplete information, 
 we may affirm that an American family living in a city is doomed to 
 extermination within four generations. One individual only of the 
 fifth generation of I,ondon birth was found in that city by an eminent 
 and careful observer. Bowdin could discover no pure-blooded 
 Parisians beyond the third generation. 
 
 Marriage being to get children for the continuation of the life of 
 the individual through them, it becomes an idle thing to marry and 
 then live where the children are either certain to die early or else 
 are certain to kill the breed and family in a short time through their 
 weakened reproductive powers. 
 
 The future of the family in the children is the most important 
 consideration in counselling against cities as places of residence. 
 Added to the above reason is this, that the home is never so com- 
 pletely a home in the city as in the country. The attractions and 
 diversions of a great city, the crowd even, that ceaselessly tramps 
 along the hard stones, have their fascinations. 
 
 The welfare and amusement of the husband or the wife seem less 
 dependent on each other under these conditions. The happiest 
 marriages and the most complete unions are therefore in the country. 
 
 Besides all this, city life in its attractions and ambitions, and in 
 the continual presence of a strange crowd, is not favorable to mater- 
 nity. The modesty of the pregnant woman, and the exercise neces- 
 sary for her health, are at war. Thus city families have fewer 
 children than country ones, and there are more marriages quite 
 sterile in cities also. 
 
 It must be said, however, that some of the small towns in New 
 England are an exception to this rule. Small families and sterility 
 are more noticeable in some of these than in many of our large cities. 
 This is owing to a false education that teaches nothing as to the 
 
Hints to the Husband. 
 
 221 
 
 value and necessity of child-bearing, and at the same time implants 
 in the girls ambitions inconsistent with maternity. 
 
 You cannot hope to lead a complete married life without children, 
 nor to have the complete happiness a wife can give in their absence. 
 As the city is so inimical to the grand object of matrimony, it should 
 be avoided, at least for the home. The sickness and weakness city 
 life usually produces in children, it is to be expected, will diminish 
 the happiness of your wife, the mother, and consequently yours also. 
 
 The vice and wickedness of cities presented to you every day, as 
 it must be should you reside in a city, will assuredly injure your 
 character. Can you touch pitch and not be defiled ? 
 
 Recent statistics in England show that, at the same age, the 
 country resident weighs more than the city man. The figures are : 
 
 
 Height. 
 
 Weight. 
 
 Breathing, 
 
 Pull. 
 
 Squeeze. 
 
 Cambridge 
 (country) 
 
 Kensington 
 (city) 
 
 68.9 in. 
 67.9 " 
 
 153.6 lbs. 
 143 " 
 
 254 
 219 
 
 83 
 74 
 
 87.5 
 85 
 
 It will thus be seen that physically there is a marked advantage 
 to the adult in the country. The difierence is the more noticeable 
 as the district of Kensington selected to represent cities is an excep- 
 tional and superior one. The common observation of an inquirer, 
 merely looking at any gathering of countr}^ and then at one of city 
 children, will be convinced that the inferiority of city adults com- 
 pared to country people is shared by the children also. The 
 intellectual grasp of the country children, being shown in another 
 place to be greater than those of the city, the disadvantages of city 
 life become clear. 
 
 When we consider that the highest rewards for effort have 
 generally been found in the cities of the world, and that consequently 
 the strongest and most amljitious have been for centuries drifting to 
 the cities, we may well note with attention the fact that our leaders 
 and thinkers, speaking generally, are, as they have been, bom in the 
 country. The continued recruiting of the city population from the 
 cream of the country has not in all time enabled it to produce its own 
 leaders. 
 
 The city then is a place where we can hardly hope to maintain 
 for our children a grand superiority, much less make an advance. 
 If the cities, after ages of immigration of the best and strongest of 
 
The Conquest of Death. 
 
 mankind, are unable, from a thus selected population, to produce 
 the leaders of mankind within their own precincts, there must be 
 something fatally deteriorating in their influences. It may be that 
 a race will eventually develop with superior mental endowments, 
 able to overcome the drawbacks of cities, while reaping their material 
 rewards. This possibility should be carefully watched for. 
 
 Quatrefages in his Human Species^ page 224 et seq. , cites a number 
 of facts which go to suggest this possibility. He shows in these that 
 animals and men emigrating into new climates often suffer an 
 increased death-rate and diminished birth-rate. Sometimes this 
 goes so far as to indicate extermination. A death-rate higher than 
 the birth-rate must eventually end in this way. But he shows that 
 a condition of this kind is frequently overcome. 
 
 The goose, when introduced at Bogota, seemed doomed through 
 diminished fertility and vitality to extermination. It is now, how- 
 ever, passed the crisis, and seems as vigorous in its new home as in 
 its old one. The introduction of chickens at Cuzco was beset by the 
 same difficulty. Infertile or addled eggs showed a lack of fertility 
 in both the male and the female. The eggs laid were few, and the 
 mortality of the chicks hatched was excessive. Now, however, the 
 chickens at Cuzco have become established by the survival of the 
 fittest, and they seem as thrifty as elsewhere. 
 
 The negro slaves introduced into the Southern States, to Brazil, 
 Jamaica, Cuba, and the French Antilles, showed for a long time a 
 death-rate greater than the birth-rate, and the fact was often cited to 
 show that without the slave-trade the plantations could not long be 
 manned. We see, however, the black race now established in all 
 these places. 
 
 So, also, with the whites in Martinique, Isle of Bourbon, Algiers, 
 lyouisiana, and in many places, the death-rate was at first excessive 
 and above the birth-rate, but we find these conditions now overcome 
 and the whites maintaining themselves in all these places. The 
 acclimatization, however, cannot be accomplished when the condi- 
 tions are very unfavorable without a great loss of individuals and 
 without a heavy risk of failure. 
 
 During the Civil War of the sixties in America, the figures of 
 the medical department and the observation of many field officers 
 indicate that the regiments from the cities were less subject to 
 sickness, that their members wounded recovered more quickly, that 
 they marched better and generally had more endurance than the 
 soldiers from the country, and suffered less from night work and loss 
 of sleep. These statements, in the main, rest on sufficiently good 
 authority to demand attention. 
 
Hints to the Husband, 223 
 
 In imagining an explanation to fit our other information, it must 
 be remembered that an explanation of unfavorable facts is usually 
 more or less faulty. With this condition the following points are 
 offered to reconcile the divergence : 
 
 I St. That the campaigning life to the city resident was a 
 medicine and healthier perhaps, even with all its hardships, than the 
 one from which he came, and that consequently his constitution and 
 condition improved. 
 
 2d. That the composition of regiments could only be approx- 
 imately known, and that many of the city soldiers were bom, if not 
 reared, in the country. 
 
 3d. That the exposures of city life had weeded out largely those 
 subject to disease, such as measles, small-pox, scarlet fever, etc., 
 while the country man, brought suddenly into crowded camps 
 without this full weeding process, became peculiarly liable to epi- 
 demics of such diseases. 
 
 4th. The figures apply as far as they go to the Northern armies 
 alone. The Southern armies were almost exclusively composed of 
 coim try-bom and country -bred men. In endurance of poor clothing, 
 poor food, and hard marching, they sinpassed the Northern soldiers. 
 Whether they would have done so had the case been reversed and 
 the Northern homesteads and sovereignty been at stake, is a ques- 
 tion. The Northern army was comparatively a city army ; the 
 Southern, a country one. In this aspect, man for man, the country 
 army must be considered the best as to endurance. 
 
 The army officers with whom I have conversed on this point 
 nearly all noted the superior facility of making good soldiers quickly 
 out of city men as compared to country ones. Contagious disease 
 and homesickness seem the most troublesome things to country men 
 newly enlisted. After the acclimatization, however, the coimtry man 
 seems, generally considered, to have been the best man. 
 
 One Western officer, Col. Miller, expressed the opinion that the 
 pioneer or frontiersman made, by far, the best soldier. One of the 
 principal recruiting officers in the army says that he would take a 
 countryman as a recruit every time in preference to a city man. 
 
 Gen. Irwin McDowell and Gen. Crittenden are my principal 
 authorities on the deficiencies of the country man on first enlistment 
 in the army. Col. C. Mason Kinne thinks that the city soldiers 
 stood the hardships of the war better throughout. His explanation 
 is that those who could not stand the irregularities and strain of 
 cities died young, and that only those of superior vitality were left to 
 enlist. These, if they had been reared in the country, would have 
 been stronger and hardier than they were, in his opinion. 
 
224 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 ^ 
 
 Col. Volkman, on the other hand, thinks the country men always 
 the best. His extensive experience as First Aid to Gen. Sheridan, 
 as recruiting oflScer for many years, and in other positions of vantage 
 in this question, make his testimony valuable. The proportion of 
 recruits rejected for physical defects is very materially greater in 
 cities than in the country ; if to this cause were added moral defects, 
 the disadvantage, in this officer's opinion, would be still greater. 
 
 As a rule in history pastoral tribes or hunters, such as the 
 Huns, Goths, Vandals, Arabs, Mongols, Turks, etc., have been 
 superior in fighting qualities to the educated and civilized people 
 with whom they have contended. Such tribes were all country 
 men, while to a large extent their victims, the civilized, were citizens 
 of cities. 
 
 Even in late years with all the superiority of civilized weapons 
 in war, we find naked bands of Zulus near Natal, of Bedouins in 
 Nubia, with swords or spears destroying the splendidly drilled and 
 armed troops of England. 
 
 The wild Indians often w^orry the American army, as witness the 
 destruction of Custer by the Sioux, while even in peaceful Samoa, a 
 band of German marines, we hear, are defeated and driven off by the 
 naked natives. 
 
 The medical history of the war in America, while worthy of 
 careful study, does not seem sufficient to shake our general facts as 
 to the effects of cities, so far, upon mankind. 
 
 A theory has been advanced to account for the superior qualities 
 noted in the city regiments, based upon a supposed storage of energy 
 in the city man through good feeding. It is true that the food of 
 the city man is generally better and better prepared than that of the 
 country man. Some force is given to this theory by such facts as 
 the superior endurance of cold in the Russian campaign of Napoleon 
 by the soldiers of Southern France and Italy. This has been much 
 remarked on, for with less protection they stood the cold and priva- 
 tions better even than the Russians themselves. It was the Ger- 
 mans of the central provinces who had the least vigor in this re- 
 spect, and their losses in this terrible campaign practically swept 
 whole corps of their soldiers out of existence. 
 
 It has been said that the temperate climate, with but few ex- 
 tremes, of Provence and Italy allows the energies of the food eaten 
 by man to accumulate in some unknown way and thus to furnish a 
 storehouse to draw upon in emergency ; consequently men from such 
 climates may be expected to support the rigors of a more northern 
 winter for at least a year or two better than those born under the 
 bear. People from Southern California seem to resist the cold of 
 
Hints to the Husband. 225 
 
 their first eastern winter better than the eastern residents themselves. 
 This explanation is not satisfactorj-. 
 
 Another important consideration in this connection is that the 
 moral health is as much benefited b}^ the country as the physical. 
 Immoral acts are more difficult in the country than in the city, for 
 they are more difficult to conceal. 
 
 The mode and system of life make all crime comparatively easy 
 in cities. The excitement, the crowding, the luxury, the strain on 
 the nerves, and the decoys to lead one on are all in the city. In the 
 country a man and his habits are known for miles around. In the 
 city one may never even have seen his next-door neighbor, and in a 
 few blocks any one can get into a locality where no person knows or 
 cares for him. Thus in the country fathers, mothers, and later the 
 children are removed from the grosser temptations to crime. With 
 the nurses and servants it is the same. They must lead better lives 
 in the country than in the city. 
 
 The city offers the only exception to the rule laid down that we 
 must work either productively or unproductively, either in virtue 
 for the good or in vice for the bad. The exception is, it is true, but 
 a partial one. A city does give more capacity for idleness, and con- 
 sequently for death and extermination of the family, than the coun- 
 try. The amusements, theatres, gardens, and even the crowds 
 moving in the streets visible firom a window seat, give an occupation 
 to the mind that is no occupation. The outside movements of the 
 city permit an individual idleness that would be intolerable in the 
 country ; consequently, this possibility for nonentity, for the decay 
 through non-use of the faculties, should be avoided. Many city 
 persons now cannot endure the country ; when in it they are the 
 victims of ennui. Such persons with few exceptions are non-pro- 
 ducers and belong to the useless or dangerous class. 
 
 The city amusements, such as theatres, etc. , stir up the emotions 
 without creating any action. We sympathize with the hero, weep 
 with the afflicted, condemn the villain, — and do nothing. Thus 
 theatrical representations in excess form in us the habit of being 
 stirred to our nature's depths without action. This is their worst 
 feature. Never select a home in the city. 
 
 Every wife should have an occupation in the home. The larger 
 part of her time should be taken up in regular duties of some useful 
 kind. This is necessary for your happiness, for her happiness, for 
 her health, and for the development through use of her faculties, so 
 that these may add force to her children by inheritance. No one can 
 be healthy who has for any length of time nothing to do. The health 
 not only of the body but of the morals and of the mind is involved. 
 
2 26 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 You should have something to do, so should your wife, and so 
 should your children. Idleness is the true devil. It leads to the 
 hardest and most painful kinds of work, paid in distressing wages. 
 The work of vice is born of idleness. 
 
 Therefore give your wife an occupation, see to it that she has 
 some useful duty to interest her. Vice is but too likely to capture 
 idle hands. The alternative is inanity. 
 
 If idleness did not endanger morality and chastity it would be 
 still most reprehensible. In idleness the faculties fail ; without use 
 our bodies and brains get into a rust. A man who does not use his 
 body soon loses the power to do so. He either becomes obese or 
 else emaciated with dyspepsia, muscular force decreases, the phy- 
 sique retrogresses. So the sedentary lose the health of the body. 
 The health of the mind depends equally upon reasonable use. It is 
 the shepherd, who, of all employed men, has least use for his brain, 
 as it is the shepherd also that furnishes of all occupations the largest 
 proportion of insane. All results of a true or of an improper life are 
 transmissible ; therefore, for the children's sake, for the future, the 
 wife should be usefully employed in both body and mind. Her first 
 employments should be in household works. These will be found 
 sufficient in the majority of cases. In fact, domestic life, being the 
 key to the future, is the most important in the state. In Tasks by 
 Twilight the chapter on the '' Education of the Girl," shows that 
 chemistry, engineering, medicine, etc., may be brought into the 
 every-day home life of the wife. Thus the highest attainments are 
 useful in the home, and a strictly home life is perfectly compatible 
 with an interest in the most important knowledge acquired by 
 mankind. 
 
 The charms of home life depend on the useful, but the ornamental 
 is important also. So the wife has a place for surplus energy in 
 music and painting. The most important of the home duties is, of 
 course, the rearing of children. The wdfe in this work forms the 
 next generation, which is the most influential work of life. 
 
 The only point to be considered in providing for the employment 
 of the wife is that it should never place her in dubious positions. 
 The security of the paternity of his children is of the first import- 
 ance to the man, and all things throwing the least doubt on this in 
 the past, present, or future are dangerous. So, also, all ambitions 
 vShould be directed to childbirth, or things immediate to it. 
 
 True development of the physique, brain, and faculties must im- 
 prove the children born. No development is too great for the 
 mother, provided her child-bearing capacity and will for it be not 
 interfered with. 
 
Hints to the Husband. 227 
 
 In home matters the wife should have charge and be responsible. 
 Thus by responsibility will her character be strengthened. Feeling 
 her responsibility, she will take an interest in the household w'elfare 
 and economy that could not otherwise be expected. Put her in 
 charge of these matters. Express household wishes to your wife 
 and let all orders proceed through her. If this practice be adopted, 
 many sources of friction will be avoided. Under this scheme ser- 
 vants have one head to look to, cannot receive contradictory orders 
 from dififerent chiefs, and can never give the excuse for non-per- 
 formance of orders that some one else told them to do something 
 else. The wife's self-reliance and standing in the household will be 
 increased, and her interest in domestic affairs must be improved if 
 slight, or maintained if strong. 
 
 A woman is much more emotional than a man. It is therefore 
 necessary for the man to make an extra effort in keeping up the 
 little attentions and marks of affection so much prized by a wife. 
 Husbands often become lax in these matters and lose much happi- 
 ness by doing so. A husband should be as polite in speech and 
 conduct to his wife as he would be to any strange lady in similar cir- 
 cumstances, nay more so, for the stranger he may never see again, 
 while the wife is his companion for life. So often one sees this rule 
 violated, so often one is shocked and made uncomfortable by the 
 rudeness of married people to each other, and their neglect of the 
 common courtesies of society -when outsiders are present to see, that 
 we must believe that these practices are usual in private married 
 life. What an amount of unnecessary friction, mortification, and loss 
 of life's sunshine this mistaken conduct means, it would be difiicult 
 to tell. Avoid this rock. 
 
 Never nag. Never be less considerate in your dress or address 
 when alone with your wife than when with strangers. Carelessness 
 in these matters is both common and foolish. A little verse taught 
 to children has a power of wisdom in it : 
 
 ** Little drops of water, little grains of sand, 
 Make the mighty ocean and- the beauteous land ; 
 I/ittle deeds of kindness, little words of love, 
 Make the world an Eden like the Heaven above." 
 
 lyife is made up of little things. An accumulation of little irrita- 
 tions will bring discontent if not a passionate outburst after they 
 have reached a climax. It was the straw that broke the camel's 
 back. On the other hand, little attentions and care in the detail of 
 life make happiness when many larger considerations would counter- 
 indicate it. 
 
2 28 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 If you can afford it take two morning newspapers, one for your 
 wife, one for yourself. A thousand and one little directions of this 
 kind can be given but cannot be remembered. Consequently the 
 general principle of treating the wife with a consideration greater 
 than that given to friends, must be the standard set up to govern the 
 minor happenings of life. 
 
 Good manners are the result of rules followed in conduct, that by 
 long experience have been found most conducive to happy and 
 smooth intercourse amongst mankind in the social state. I^east of 
 all should these rules be neglected in the home. The last shred of 
 politeness a man possesses should be wrapped around the hearts he 
 loves. 
 
 The home is the holy of holies of society. From it springs the 
 future. It is the inspiration to greatness, the sanctuary of the heart. 
 Nothing is too good for it, no diplomacy too high, no manners too 
 fine, no science too grand. On the contrary all these and all inven- 
 tions are servants to the home and secondary to it. The home or 
 family is the foundation of society upon which all else rests, to which 
 all else is servant. Let the wife then know the importance of her 
 position, that as mother and as influencer and former of her children, 
 as manager of the home, it is she who holds the key to the future of 
 the race, and in reality holds the most important position in society. 
 The occupations of men and their strength when properly directed 
 are all for the support and defence of the home, which is the citadel 
 of society held by the wife. 
 
 Often married people who have an affection for each other get 
 into the unfortunate habit of nagging, speaking crossly, and gen- 
 erally treating each other as they never would think of treating a 
 stranger under the same circumstances. The rules of social inter- 
 course are for the avoidance by mankind of grating and unpleasant 
 occurrences, and to promote ease and happiness in our general rela- 
 tions. If we find these rules useful for our welfare in dealing with 
 society, the members of which we may meet once a day, once a 
 week, once a year, or perhaps never again, how much more essential 
 are they in the family whose members we are with so much ; espe- 
 cially are they important for the wife and husband who are together 
 more or less both at night and in the day. 
 
 In Deuteronomy, Chap, xxiv., the following rule is made: 
 *' When a man hath taken a new wife, he shall not go out to war, 
 neither shall he be charged with any business, but he shall be free 
 at home one year, and shall cheer up his wife, which he hath 
 taken." 
 
 The first year of married life, as Moses indicates, is the formative 
 
Hints to the Husband, 229 
 
 one. It is important to pay more than ordinary attention to the 
 wife at that time. 
 
 The general strategy of successful sexual companionship is 
 worthy of some consideration. For with the proper points before 
 one many minor errors leading to discord and unhappiness may be 
 avoided. 
 
 A woman may give herself to a man in spirit — that is, she may 
 be willing to give herself corporeally, and thus give herself in wish, 
 though not in act. This is capable of producing great devotion on 
 the part of the woman. 
 
 When the willingness to give is followed by the woman's sur- 
 render of her person to the man, there is in this act and at that time 
 an intense instinctive worship of the man. 
 
 She gives, he takes. She demands to be dominated. She sur- 
 renders and abdicates every command and power. She leans upon 
 him, lies in his arms at his orders and in his power. As her body 
 has merged in his, so she desires to merge into him and be part of 
 him in all things. There is nothing too much for her to do for him, 
 no self-effacement too great, no act to indicate devotion or worship 
 too menial or too much a confession of conquest for her to make. 
 
 Here is the point of strategy for the husband and wife to con- 
 sider. She must give. He must take. 
 
 This is the key that commands marriage. 
 
 If this essential to all marriage be properly started and properly 
 maintained, the marriage must succeed. No matter what other con- 
 ditions may fail, the due acceptance and holding by the man of the 
 woman's surrender will make all else secondary. He may beat her, 
 she will forgive it. He may squander her property, she will give 
 him more. He may be untrue and she will welcome him again. If, 
 on the other hand, this strategic situation does not stand, no wealth, 
 position, or anything can cure its absence. 
 
 Indeed, in the first case, a divorce or marriage-breaking may 
 occur. But such division, as far as the woman is concerned, is ad- 
 ventitious, formal, nominal, not real, and no matter what injuries her 
 husband may heap on her, she will still bear a fuller and better 
 rounded life, — happier, in fact, than if separated from him and freed 
 from his abuse. 
 
 So, on the other hand, no ease, idleness, comfort, wealth, position, 
 nor power can fill any wife's heart or life if this marriage-give-and- 
 take, this strategy of situation, be not there. 
 
 Do not confuse a continued corporeal application of this principle 
 with spiritual strategy, so difl&cult to describe and which is here 
 intended. 
 
230 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 No one in liis or her senses expects a happy marriage where the 
 husband beats his wife like some primitive savage, or uses his 
 masculine ascendancy to get hold of her property to waste it. 
 None of these things mean happiness, but a woman is more capable 
 of devotion to a man who beats her, than to one she beats. 
 
 It is the husband's business to understand the importance of care 
 to his wife during pregnancy and childbirth. Some points are given 
 on this subject in the "Treatment of the Child," but the subject is 
 only touched on. A husband should make a study of what is proper 
 at these times and should certainly read up on obstetrics, and if possi- 
 ble take a course in this study. This is not for the purpose of making 
 him a midwife, but so that by accurate information he can see that 
 the proper attention is given by those practically qualified. 
 
 Childbirth is the true realization of marriage. The mystery 
 and grandeur of creation are then possessed by the happy pair. It 
 is the grand crisis as it is the grand moment when hope is made cap- 
 tive and your life is renewed. Neglect no precaution at this time, 
 deprive yourself of no assistance, for your fortunes, your studies, and 
 your efforts when truly directed are all for the wonderful achievement 
 of your own new birth in the child. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 A WORD TO THE WIFE. 
 
 THE primary reason for marriage is to secure the paternity of 
 children. Therefore, when a woman becomes a wife, the 
 principal duty of her life is to bear children, and to so guard 
 her virtue that not even a doubt of it can find lodgment in her hus- 
 band. She should not permit intimacies to grow up between any 
 man other than her husband and herself. What is called flirtation 
 in a married woman is simply damnable. The more sound a man 
 the husband is, the more certain it is that such destruction of the 
 sanctity of the home will alienate him from the wife. 
 
 No true wife will be untrue in fact or in semblance. It is exceed- 
 ingly bad policy on the part of a wife to be flirtatious with other 
 men. She sees them tO-day, but may never see them again. Their 
 interest at best is but a passing one, intense perhaps for the moment 
 of to-day, but gone in the hours of the to-morrow. 
 
 The attentions of men to the wives of others is at base nearly 
 always due to improper motives. Once gratified in their wishes, it 
 is not long before these butterfly seducers fly to new flowers, and 
 abandon to a life of reproach and misery those whom they betray 
 and ruin. 
 
 Upon the husband the wife depends for her position in society, 
 and on him also for her happiness. If he throws her ofi" for cause, 
 society frowns upon her, for society depends on the family for its 
 existence, and as it is healthy, so will it resent unwifely conduct 
 leading to the injury of the family. 
 
 If, however, the wife has not gone into the gulf, only played on 
 the edge, and lives on with her husband, his confidence will be 
 shaken in her, and a shadow will be on the hearth. The complete 
 happiness of home life will be impossible. The risk being so great, 
 the w4fe should not only maintain her virtue in fact, but should 
 avoid as well the slightest cause for scandal. Scandal is much 
 decried, but it is a great protector of society and of the family. 
 Beware of it, for it sees when you least suspect. 
 
 The web in which the wife has caught her husband she should 
 
 231 
 
232 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 ever work to transform into a safe and close cage for his heart. A 
 husband caught is not yet fully secured. The ceremony of marriage 
 is but the conventionality to be followed by other things. It is after 
 the vows are passed that the wife enters into the business of really 
 securing her husband to herself. If she leave him in the web of 
 fancy in which he was caught, doing no more for him or to fasten 
 him, but, on the contrary, devote herself to weaving other webs for 
 piratical bachelors and society men, she will find marriage a lottery 
 indeed, and herself no prize-winner. 
 
 Where the substance goes the shadow must follow. The child is 
 the substance of marriage. To the extent that marriages are child- 
 less, to the extent that husbands and wives seek to avoid procrea- 
 tion, so do they take the substance out of marriage. Its shadow, the 
 form, convention, and habit of society, cannot remain when the sub- 
 stance is gone. So we find with decreasing birth-rate increasing 
 divorce. I^t wives remember this. 
 
 In certain times, places, and societies, cosmetics for the face are 
 or have been used, and doubtless will remain in use, or come into 
 fashion again. Whatever may be said for this practice before mar- 
 riage, every indication is against it afterward. Cosmetics on the face 
 are not a bait for kisses. Their efiect is, besides, to injure the skin, 
 and consequently to diminish its natural attractiveness. 
 
 Good cookery, good housekeeping, good dressing, these are the 
 means to an end — ^The Happy Home. Sometimes one or more of 
 these is allowed to so dominate a wife's life that the means destroys 
 rather than makes the end. 
 
 She is a housewife instead of her husband's wife. So other hob- 
 bies, industrial, social, or intellectual, good as means to develop the 
 faculties, to make life successful, and to transmit superiorities to 
 children, are sometimes so exaggerated as to destroy home happiness 
 and to destroy the true end of every life — perpetuation in the child. 
 Remember, then, the end while using the means. 
 
 The general policy of a wife in regard to her husband's business 
 should be helpful, interested, and sympathetic. At the same time 
 she should be careful to avoid criticism or censure in public, even 
 when just. 
 
 In the matter of gossip or tale-bearing involving her husband or 
 children, she should defend him or them before others, reserving 
 advice, protest, or correction to a private meeting. As a rule, a wife 
 should refuse to listen to gossip or scandal regarding her husband. 
 The wife should bear her husband children, the more the better. 
 Bvery true man wishes for children of his own, and is delighted 
 when they come, even though he deny it, or propose sterility to his 
 
A Word to the Wife, 233 
 
 wife. This is certain, a childless wife, as her charms pass away, 
 loses her hold on her husband. The more vigorous the man, the 
 more sure is the result. The wife should remember that artificially 
 produced sterility brings wrinkles, loss of beauty, loss of health, and 
 premature old age. 
 
 The bearing of children is the surest means of preserving the 
 health, vigor, and youth of the wife, as well as the respect and love 
 of her husband when her charms have faded. This being the 
 natural function of woman, it must be utilized, otherwise, like a 
 non-use of the muscles, the senses, or the intellect, a decay com- 
 mences in the part so neglected, only to spread through the whole 
 organism. 
 
 The youngest-looking women for their age and the most vigorous 
 are those who bear children. The woman of the greatest vigor in 
 advanced age I ever knew was a mother of fourteen living children. 
 She is now eighty-four years of age. The most vigorous woman 
 past the menopause I have known is a woman of fifty-three, the 
 mother of twenty-three children. 
 
 Any reputable physician will inform the inquirer as to the almost 
 universal invalidism prevalent amongst American single women 
 after the age of twenty-eight. Two physicians in I^os Angeles, who 
 are enjoying a large, if not the largest, practice in that city and 
 county, tell me that the proportion of single women amongst native 
 Americans, who have trouble after twenty-five with their reproduc- 
 tive organs, is fully nine tenths, or ninety out of every hundred. (A 
 specialist is liable to overestimate all figures in his specialty ; we 
 must then put a grain of salt into these estimates.) 
 
 Amongst married women who prevent childbirth by abortion or 
 other means, disease, physical or moral, and a life of bodily or mental 
 suffering is the sure consequence. 
 
 The first effect of uterine diseases is upon the vigor and happiness 
 of the woman, and the second, through incapacity on her part to ful- 
 fil the duties of wife, to disgust, and consequently to alienate, the 
 husband, and to tempt him to infidelity. 
 
 No woman who is unwilling to bear children should ever marry. 
 Nature has nothing but punishment for those who violate her laws. 
 The wife should make it a rule not to throw the care of a baby or of 
 children upon the husband, especially at night. His work is outside ; 
 for this his temperament is suited. If he performs this part of the 
 contract, an additional performance of the wife's duties is likely to 
 injure his health. If he does not perform his proper duties, there is 
 nothing so likely to keep up the weakness as a continued diversion 
 of his energies to the wife's field of action. 
 
234 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 The wife should be careful of her mental and bodily health. She 
 can best do this by useful occupation. 
 
 The home should be made and kept attractive, so that the hus- 
 band will find no place pleasanter and no welcome warmer than at 
 his own home. A man a-courting is one thing, and a man a hus- 
 band is quite another. In the first case the man is pre-eminently 
 the one who seeks to please ; in the second case this is the pre- 
 eminent business of the wife. 
 
 A bride should expect to find shortly after marriage a great dif- 
 ference between her lover as a husband and her lover as a beau. 
 He enters with marriage the serious business of life, and must give 
 time and attention to his work. Too often, indeed, husbands devote 
 their whole energy to the outside fight to the neglect of the home, 
 but a husband can be a true lover without continuing the customs of 
 courting. In fact, such a continuation in its full vigor would prac- 
 tically push all other activities to one side. Moses contemplated this 
 when he commanded the newly married man to leave all business 
 and to devote himself entirely to the bride for one year. 
 
 A wife may have great power over her husband ; when such is 
 the case, she should never show it in public, nor thrust the fact upon 
 the husband. In other words, don't rule your husband, and if you 
 do rule him, don't let any one know it, not even the husband. 
 
 Every undertaking, partnership, or combination that has to sub- 
 mit to competition must have an executive head to be successful. A 
 number of young women in our day reflect the tendency of the times 
 toward individualism at the expense of family unity, by a revolt 
 against the headship of the husband in marriage. The protest of 
 women against even the word obedience, still contained in the mar- 
 riage service of the churches, is very often heard. By such persons 
 marriage is made a dissolvable compact without a head. The family, 
 like any other combination, to be successful, must have a head. 
 There can be no head unless there is final jurisdiction in some one. 
 What would be thought of the prospects of an army whose captains 
 maintained independence against their colonels, their colonels against 
 their generals, and their generals against their commander-in-chief? 
 The army is a plain illustration, but may be considered to be in- 
 applicable to civil life. I,et us then look at civil life. What would 
 we think of a business firm's prospects where the clerks declared 
 independence against the junior partners, and the junior partners 
 against the head of the house ? So in the family, if the children do 
 not recognize the mother as an adviser to be heeded and obeyed, 
 and the wife does not recognize the husband as chief, there can be 
 no unity or cohesion in the family. Such a family can have no 
 
A Word to the Wife. 235 
 
 executive capacity as a family, no force and no influence. What 
 would be said of clerks, partners, or officers who refused to recognize 
 a chief on the ground that such a recognition was a disgraceful 
 confession of a non-existing inferiority ? 
 
 The presence of a chief is necessary in every undertaking. With- 
 out such there cannot be unity in direction of force. A wife who 
 will not agree to a head and chief of the family sets up a doctrine of 
 revolutionary anarchy that must permeate and weaken the family 
 throughout. Her control over her children and servants is over- 
 thrown by her own doctrine ; if she will not have a chief, why, indeed, 
 should they ? The acceptance of the husband by the wife in mar- 
 riage should be like the acceptance of a commission in the army. It 
 should involve obedience to the chief. As a bad general is better 
 than no general in an army, so a bad or inferior chief is better than 
 no chief in a family. The exceptions that may be thought of as 
 applying to one apply equally to the other. In either case ' ' no 
 chief" is a condition of radical defect and weakness. In the army 
 it is injurious to its members and its cause. In the family it is 
 ityurious to its members and to its future. 
 
 Never tell your husband that he does not love you, or that he no 
 longer loves you, etc. Such talk tends to tiresome repetition, and 
 may suggest doubts in the husband's mind on the point you desire 
 assured. The maxim may be laid down that it is unwise to suggest 
 an idea which you do not wish carried out. 
 
 Avoid having animals, birds, etc., as house pets. Numbers of 
 persons are frightened or bitten or injured by such pets every year. 
 The most prominent recent case of this kind is that of the Princess de 
 Sagan, who was bitten by her monkey diseased with hydrophobia. 
 Animals carry and disseminate disease. Some diseases come to man 
 from them, such as hydrophobia, anthrax, tetanus, etc. Animals 
 are short-lived and a favorite must soon give pain by its useless age 
 or early death. 
 
 Such pets usually annoy friends, often exasperate the husband, 
 and must always divert duty from him and distract the attention 
 from the true household pet, the child, and prevent its production or 
 its due care, if happily born. Animal pets are the resource of the 
 childless, and sometimes may cause persons to be satisfied with 
 sterility who otherwise would have married, or if married, have had 
 children. They have no proper life in a true home. 
 
 Never nag or scold your husband ; it is a risky business, and 
 eventually makes the life of the wife nearly as unpleasant as that of 
 the husband. The efforts devoted to recrimination are not remunera- 
 tive. If the husband behaves badly, use your efforts and ingenuity 
 
236 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 to bring him to a right course. Scolding at one extreme and 
 maudhng caresses at the other are not good strategy. 
 
 In such unfortunate cases, love and patience judiciously handled 
 are the best remedies. Well cooked food, an economically and well 
 ordered household, a neat and becomingly dressed wife, true to her 
 vow, together with children, make the home a place that has no 
 equal for any normally constituted man. There is no fear that the 
 club will draw any man except a fool from such a home. 
 
 By neat and becoming dress, it is not meant that a wife should 
 wear a ball dress in the kitchen ; on the contrary, the dress should 
 be suited to the occupation, but no sensible wife will ever appear 
 before her husband in unclean clothes, in curl papers, or go slipshod 
 and slovenly in the house. It would be better for a wife to thus 
 destroy her womanly attractions in public streets amongst strangers 
 than in the home and before her husband. 
 
 The love which induces a man to marry a woman is born of and 
 based upon the reproductive instinct, which is expressed in sexual 
 desire. A wife should never lose sight of this fact, and should 
 always keep herself neat in dress and in person. Nothing in the 
 home is more attractive than a clean, simple dress upon a pretty 
 woman engaged in household work. 
 
 The woman at the ball with silks and laces, corsets and cosmetics, 
 decked in jewels is often a work of art beautiful to look at, indeed 
 at times even magnificent. Amongst all the women I have seen 
 thus splendidly arrayed in the court balls of Europe and the parties 
 of America, I can say that those most simply dressed pleased me the 
 best. But none of them ever had for me' the same peculiar warm 
 attraction that the maid at or fresh from household duties in her 
 appropriate garb has had. My taste in these matters is probably more 
 the rule than the exception. At least judging others by myself, I 
 can advise the wife that household duties and a neat and natty garb 
 are attractions to the husband irrespective of the addition such duties 
 well performed make to the comfort and happiness of the home. 
 
 A woman who has accomplishments should by no means neglect 
 these after marriage. Music, painting, etc., are both a pastime and 
 an occupation for a wife. Besides these considerations, accomplish- 
 ments tend to enlarge the mental horizon of the woman and benefit 
 the children, not only as they grow up, but while still in utero 
 before birth. 
 
 A wife should be advised against giving up any accomplishments 
 she may have because after marriage, say by the third year, she will 
 find that the happiness of the family depends upon them to a very 
 slight extent. 
 
A Word to the Wife, 237 
 
 The attraction of the wife to the husband is, it is true, after 
 marriage very little affected by accomplishments directly. Indirectly, 
 however, they have a considerable influence. While accomplish- 
 ments should not be neglected, they should never be allowed to 
 interfere with the home duties of first importance, or that care of the 
 health and person essential to happy married life. 
 
 The care of the children in the family is an important element 
 in the relations of husband and wife. Upon the mother through the 
 decrees of nature the principal part of this duty devolves. Well 
 mannered and useful children, healthy in body and mind, form an 
 essential feature in every happy family. With such children the 
 continued life of the father and mother has a bright future. They 
 can with good reason hope to perform better deeds in their children 
 than they themselves could do alone. A future of promise is a 
 happiness actual though in anticipation. 
 
 A wife should therefore give much attention to the forming and 
 rearing of her children. Their proper care does not involve cod- 
 dling them or so fencing them about as to prevent a due develop- 
 ment of character and individuality. The proper course is to lead 
 them to perceive for themselves the dangerous path to be avoided 
 and the good path to be followed. 
 
 With children it is as much a science and about as important to 
 know how and when to let them alone, as it is to know what to do 
 and when to do it. 
 
 The wife should always suckle her children, because this function 
 aborted means always a slow return of the reproductive organs to 
 the normal condition and generally a tedious recovery from child- 
 birth, together with danger that disease may supervene especially of 
 the mammary glands. The suppression of the activity of the mam- 
 mary glands also induces a premature return of the menses with 
 probable conception before the constitution of the woman is in the 
 best condition for it. Nature should therefore be followed. 
 
 Jealousy is an instinct in the males of the higher vertebrates. 
 Birds mate, and the male drives away other male birds. The cock 
 protects his favorite hens and attacks intruders. The tomcat will 
 not endure a rival in reproductive matters. The bull will fight a 
 bull intruding amongst his wives ; his own son will be gored as 
 promptly as any other bull. The stallion and the stag possess the 
 same instinct to secure the paternity of their offspring, and to protect 
 their females from being basely impregnated by inferior animals. 
 The females amongst these animals seem to have no development of 
 the instinct of jealousy. Its development among women is an 
 exception to the rule prevalent in the animal kingdom in this respect. 
 
238 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 Marriage with mankind is a formal recognition of the necessity 
 of the instinct of jealousy in reproduction. The proper carrying out 
 of the wedding vow does away with the usefulness of the animal 
 manifestations of a demand for purity on the part of the mother by 
 the father. 
 
 The laws of marriage are intended to do awaj^ with the necessity 
 of personal violence to protect the purity of the breed and to secure 
 the paternity of children. In this regard, law written and unwritten 
 and the machinery of society play the same beneficent part that laws 
 for the protection of property have done in securing a peaceful enjoy- 
 ment to each person of the results of their labor, thus doing away 
 with the primitive necessity of violence for this purpose. It is true 
 that both the law of property and of marriage are imperfect and full 
 of error. Their objects, however, are just. Nature demands and 
 the law recognizes that a man shordd not live with or breed to an 
 unfaithful wife. A wife should therefore excuse even abnormal 
 jealousy in the husband as a too large development of a useful and 
 widespread instinct that serves to supplement the still imperfect 
 law. 
 
 The security of the paternity of children necessitates a faithful 
 wife, but does not necessitate a faithful husband. Infidelitj^ of the 
 wife is fatal to the family. Infidelity of the husband is not neces- 
 sarily so. Therefore a wife is not wise in leaving a husband whom 
 she discovers to be sexually untrue. A revolt against the continu- 
 ance of such acts is sometimes good, but the best policy is for the 
 wife to look to the improvement of the home, to add comfort to it, 
 and, above all, to improve her own manners and to be attentive to 
 her personal appearance. She must make her home and herself 
 attractive. The normal man, with a healthy wife and a well- 
 regulated home is but little tempted to leave it for stolen sexual 
 indulgence. 
 
 Jealousy in man is of greatly more importance to the welfare of 
 the race than in woman, but it has good cause in women also. 
 Amongst animals the females have little or no manifestations of this 
 instinct. But the conditions are different in the essentials of repro- 
 duction with mankind. 
 
 Our children are helpless for a long period, and therefore require 
 a protector and supporter during this time, which ofiice is naturally 
 the part of the man, both on account of his strength and on account 
 of the absorption of the mother's energy and time in the care of the 
 helpless young. 
 
 Venereal diseases are the exclusive property of humanity. The 
 effects of these diseases, especially of syphilis, are terrible, and en- 
 
A Word to the Wife, 239 
 
 dure from one generation to another ; consequently, promiscuous 
 intercourse on the part of the man renders him liable to infection, 
 which it must be expected will equally disease and ruin his wife. 
 But, worse than this, the child of such a parent must carry the curse, 
 and the father and mother thus suffer in the child, and, through the 
 debilitated constitution of the progeny, extermination stares them in 
 the face. 
 
 Thus jealousy in woman is shown to have a foundation in these 
 two reasons, if in no others. A wife, however, should bear in mind 
 the radical difference to the family of the husband or wife's infidelity. 
 In the first case it is a venial offence, unless disease be contracted or 
 the support of the family endangered. 
 
 No imcertainty as to the children of the wife is possible, and no 
 stamp or life from an outside source is introduced as a burden to the 
 family. With the wife infidelity is ruin to the family. The husband 
 no longer feels certain that the children born are his, and the wife be- 
 comes either sterile or may bear into the family a child of some dissolute 
 man, not the husband, and carry through life the stamp of such 
 inferior man to plague the fool-husband in children subsequently 
 bom to him. 
 
 A faithless woman is also liable to neglect her children, if she 
 have any, and to bring venereal disease into the family. Therefore, 
 a dissolute man is bad, but a dissolute woman is intolerable. 
 
 A wife should never have a secret from her husband. Dickens 
 wrote a story, called The Cricket on the Hearth, that incidentally 
 shows how dangerous even a good scheme may become to a family 
 by making a secret of it. Husband and wife are too near for one to 
 have a secret from the other. Where secrets exist, acts will be mis- 
 understood, letters and words misconstrued, love wear the livery of 
 jealousy, and happiness be kicked out of the home. 
 
 The wise wife will show an interest in her husband's occupations 
 and ambitions, for by such a course she will secure his confidences 
 and live his life, thus securing a powerful hold upon him, second 
 only to that given by a fine child. 
 
 As a wife should not be down at the heel in her personal appear- 
 ance, nor in her housekeeping, neither should she allow herself to be 
 down at the heel intellectually. She should read, think, and keep 
 herself informed in the world's movements. This is advisable for 
 two reasons : first, on account of her children ; and second, to make 
 herself companionable mentally to her husband. Without some 
 activity of mind on the part of the mother, the mind from disuse will 
 inevitably grow weaker, and consequently the children born will in- 
 herit the diminished mind power of the mother. The mother's 
 influence to improve the children will also be impaired. 
 
240 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 As the children are the mainhold the wife has on her husband, it 
 should be ever her object not only to have children, but to have 
 better and more forceful children than her own parents had in her, 
 and thus to make her husband glory in the renewed life she has 
 given him and herself in the fruits of the marriage. 
 
 While a wife should on no account allow society to interfere with 
 her home duties she should not altogether neglect it. A healthy 
 society has a code of unwritten laws that does much to benefit 
 humanity. Intercourse of a social kind with one's fellows broadens 
 the view and causes us to keep our dress, manners, and wits in tidy 
 and presentable form. 
 
 Balls and dances are some of the means used in society to bring 
 people together. These forms are the least suited to the wife. It 
 should be remembered that society balls are most useful as matri- 
 monial bazaars, where young people of opposite sexes may meet and 
 become acquainted. 
 
 The low-necked dress of the young lady enables the young man 
 ready for a wife to judge somewhat as to her physical qualifications 
 and suitability, and is in the same useful line as the bathing costumes 
 worn in the water by women at seaside resorts. A wife, however, 
 has no reason to display her charms even well within conventional 
 usage to the world. In this connection a French saying is apropos : 
 
 *' La femme est comme une arm^e : elle est perdue si elle n'a pas de reserve." 
 
 This saying is commended to the wife who would guard the 
 respect of society and the confidence of her husband. 
 
 Society balls are for the unmarried of both sexes, and the place 
 of the married in these is merely a service of pilotage, or as lookers 
 on. A married woman who flirts at all is a fool ; one who flirts at 
 such balls is a thief as well, for she steals the chances of her single 
 sisters. 
 
 The first duty of the wife is to preserve her faith to her husband 
 and secure him in the paternity of her children born to the marriage, 
 and the second to strengthen and build up her own and her hus- 
 band's better qualities so that these may be more prominent in the 
 children. As the wife is the better part of the husband, so also the 
 husband is the better part of the wife. That wife is truest to herself 
 who is truest to her husband. Her treatment of her husband is a 
 treatment to herself. 
 
 The wife, like the husband, has every reason to devote her best 
 efforts of all kinds to the home. The home contains for her the only 
 true happiness, the only true greatness, and within its mystic circle 
 lies hidden in the child — her future. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 RElylGION. 
 
 IT is impossible to conceive God. It is equally difficult to imagine 
 the universe without a First Cause. The mass of mankind have 
 found the lesser difficulty to be the doctrine of a Supreme 
 Omnipotent Being. Man calls this Being God. Those who think, 
 must think of God with awe. Man cannot conceive with his weak 
 senses what God is, nor why the laws of nature, which are His, are 
 what they are. The thinker merely feels able to recognize some of 
 these laws. They cannot be broken without paying the penalty. 
 Therefore man, if he lives, if he lives in perpetuity through repro- 
 duction, must observe them. 
 
 It has been inconceivable to man in general that the continued 
 development of the world from chaos to the appearance of organic 
 life and the development of this through ages of progress to the pos- 
 session by matter, in man, of intelligent thought, reason, and action, 
 is for nought. It cannot be believed that all this is to end in death. 
 The progress must go on. Every presumption from the history of 
 the globe, of life, of man, points to further development. If we 
 believe in evolution, the reality of the progress from the i&rst prim- 
 itive life to reasoning man is not more wonderful than the belief that 
 life by man will reach immortality, the power of self-continuance 
 without individual death. 
 
 How this is to be reached, no one knows. The most probable 
 way seems to be along the same lines that the progress of life has 
 already followed. If this be correct, we have but one means of 
 reaching immortality — by our children and by their children to the 
 perfect race. Thus will our spark of life bum on. The father dies, 
 but does not die. His likeness, his life, is still marching on in his 
 child to the grand future of perfection ; and so also of the mother. 
 
 Every form of religion framed by man has had for its object the 
 good of mankind. The general plan has been to secure material 
 results in this world by the promise of penalties or rewards in an- 
 other. Owing to the ignorance of the masses of the people in the 
 past, still existing to this day, but which all thinkers hope to see 
 cured, doctrines for the good of man were not receivable on reason 
 
 i6 241 
 
242 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 alone. Information and proof were generally lacking to support 
 doctrines demanding self-denial, and where proof existed it was not 
 communicable to the people ; therefore, the early leaders of mankind 
 invoked supernatural authority for their creeds, forms, and laws. 
 The credulity of ignorance, the tendency of primitive man to attrib- 
 ute the phenomena of nature to anthropomorphic forces, and the 
 early belief in spirits arising probably from dreams, etc. , made the 
 claim of supernatural authority for wise laws one easily imposed on 
 the masses. Doubtless mankind has benefited by religious forms. 
 But as man has advanced in brain power it has become more diffi- 
 cult to control him in this way. 
 
 First he loses faith in the communion with God of men in his 
 own generation, gradually working to complete negation of such 
 direct advice and counsel by God to men about him. 
 
 He comes, secondly, to lose faith in such things ever having 
 occurred. 
 
 It is to this second stage that civilized man has again arrived as 
 he has so often before. Our laws in this country are at present all 
 mundane and supposed to be based on reason and use. The canons 
 of the Church do not afiect us materially and seem to me to be losing 
 their hold daily. Our code of morality and unwritten law, being 
 based originally on this sinking foundation, is now sinking with it. I 
 do not mean that what is known as crime is more rife than formerly, but 
 that character and morality are less vigorous to-day than they were a 
 few decades ago ; as there is less belief, so there is less earnestness in 
 life. This idea may be a mistake, but it seems to me that the young 
 people lack purpose and high aims and shirk work and responsibility 
 more than formerly, and are more guided in their social relations by 
 the written law than by their honor. 
 
 If it be true that the religious forms of our day are losing their 
 capacity to hold the faith of the people in their supernatural author- 
 ity, then the whole structure of the moral code they have raised is 
 undermined and may fall. The breaking down in the past of reli- 
 gious forms through incredulity in their divine origin, as in Greece and 
 Rome, was followed by corruption and crime. It may be that simi- 
 lar dark ages will overtake us. It is very doubtful whether the 
 world is ready for a religion founded on the reason alone ; at any 
 rate all attempts at foimding such a religion have hitherto failed. 
 Men are not governed by reason. The masses never have been. 
 What governs and has governed humanity is more or less a combi- 
 nation of the following : 
 
 Force of leaders who impose their interests on the masses, self- 
 interest, passion, prejudice, sentiment, superstition, anything but 
 
Religion, 243 
 
 reason. Who ever heard of a race receiving wisdom by reason 
 alone. It may be, but it has not been. It is not wise, therefore, to 
 attack the prevailing forms of religion nor the authority on which 
 they are based. 
 
 The present religions of America are of two kinds : those that 
 are receptive and capable of change, and those that are not. The 
 value of these religions is great, especially those of the first class. 
 Through religion capable of change without ruin we may, indeed, 
 hope to see adaptations maintaining the religious feeling in man in 
 harmony with his advancing science. 
 
 The origin of the religious idea in man has been clearly and clev- 
 erly traced by a number of scientific men, best perhaps by Tylor and 
 Spencer. 
 
 Amongst the most primitive men there is practically no more re- 
 ligion than we find amongst the higher animals. With the evolu- 
 tion of man socially we find also an evolution of religion. Step by 
 step this evolution has been traced to our present position. 
 
 The strange ^nd, to the ignorant man, inexplicable metamor- 
 phoses in nature, such as the formation and disappearance of 
 clouds, the wonderful changes in the life of insects, at one time 
 crawling worms, at another beautiful flying creatures, — these and 
 other phenomena of nature, storms, whirlwinds, earthquakes, tides, 
 floods, etc., are by savages looked upon as a confirmation of the dual 
 life of things. The shadow of the cloud, of the animal, and of the 
 man, the echo that answers, and the dream that transports one to 
 distant places or brings us face to face with the dead, doubtless 
 originates this belief in a spiritual life separate from the corporeal. 
 
 The starved like the glutted savage tends in sleep to dreams. 
 The psychologic knowledge of the savage is incapable of explaining 
 a dream upon true grounds. To him the only rational view is that 
 there is another self which may leave his body and go to distant 
 places with the rapidity of lightning while the body does not move. 
 The apparitions of those dead must be to him the spirits or shadows . 
 of such and give the basis of belief in a future life. From nothing, 
 we can study in such a book as Spencer's Sociology man gradually 
 progressing to the most abstract religious conceptions. 
 
 The first dawn of religion is in an indefinite dread of the dead on 
 account of the supposed possibility of their return. The first church 
 where a sacrifice or service is held is the burial-place. The origin of 
 the sacrifice is clearly the desire of the living to give, on the one 
 hand, to the spirit of the dead the weapons and food necessary for 
 the journey of life it is supposed to take ; and, on the other hand, to 
 propitiate the shade that rpight otherwise be malignant. Amongst 
 
244 '^^^ Conquest of Death, 
 
 tribes that have migrated the general belief is that the dead will in 
 spirit return to the old home which by lapse of time has also been 
 spiritualized. 
 
 If the migration was down a river, or across a river or a sea, so 
 the spirit journey wnll be supposed to take a return course requiring 
 boats, ferrymen, etc. One dark river to cross is a common belief, 
 continuing from the savage who buries or burns his dead in a canoe, 
 or bums a mock one for his dead kinsman's spirit to use, to the 
 Ferryman Charon and our own Christian doctrine. If the migration 
 has been by land, and crossing water has not been a prominent 
 feature, then we find the sacrifice of the horse or beast of burden to 
 facilitate the return journey of the spirit. These beliefs in a future 
 life, at first indefinite and ill- defined, then limited to immediate 
 ancestors, at last include all ancestors. Great chiefs, warriors, or 
 benefactors are longer remembered, more dreamed of, more invoked, 
 and tend to an attributed ascendancy in the spirit world similar or 
 greater than they had in this world. 
 
 The dreamer or enthusiast may at first esteem that he has had 
 real interviews with such leading spirits, but the utility of spirit 
 sanction in controlling men will soon lead to claims of supernatural 
 authorship of various laws and rules deemed useful by living leaders. 
 Deification of one dead leader will lead to the deification of others ; 
 so may arise the conception of many gods, and at last, with the 
 organization of society under a powerful ruler w4th subordinate 
 chiefs, will inevitably come the idea of a similar constitution of the 
 spirit world. We in our religions of to-day conceive a ruling God 
 with subordinate spirits, saints, angels, or demons. Only in the 
 most advanced thinkers can the abstract idea of a single Supreme 
 Being arise. Even in Christianity in its least involved form we have 
 a belief in a mysterious Trinity. Amongst the Catholics many 
 angels and saints are credited with supernatural influence in mundane 
 affairs. To such, shrines are erected, pilgrimages are undertaken, and 
 gifts and offerings are made. According to the opinion of this large 
 congregation, the Mother of God has an extraordinary influence in 
 averting storms or disaster and in giving fortune and advantage to 
 mankind. 
 
 A few small sects without vitality, as the Unitarians, believe like 
 the Mahometans in one God. It must be said that this nominal 
 belief in one God by the Mahometans is often accompanied by a 
 belief in the supernatural influence of various saints, spirits, and 
 demons, and of Mahomet himself. 
 
 The idea of sacred animals may arise from the habit of certain 
 animals, as bats, owls, serpents, etc., of frequenting tombs, houses. 
 
Religion. 245 
 
 or other places where spirits are naturally supposed to be. A spirit 
 whether friendly or inimical is likely to seek the object of its atten- 
 tion ; so a serpent, which has always an attraction to the warm houses 
 or bedding of man, can easily have a spiritual life attributed to it in 
 countries where the climate favors constructions accessible to them. 
 
 The association of ghosts with the animal life found in or about 
 tombs, which were originally so often caves, is still shown in the 
 story of vampires and in the common description of ghosts as 
 squeaking or gibbering as bats do. All our religious forms, or at 
 least the popular beliefs accompanying them, bear clear traces of an 
 origin in ancestor worship. 
 
 The family domicile became the church after or with the tomb. 
 The Lares and Penates of the Romans perpetuated the early belief 
 from which their more generalized religion had grown. The Chinese 
 have never progressed much beyond ancestor worship pure and 
 simple. The one idea of a Chinaman is to marry, to have a son. 
 Everything must bend to having a son, because without a son the 
 proper sacrifices cannot be made on a man's tomb at death, and the 
 spirit wanders aimlessly in endless torture. This belief has doubtless 
 been the cause of the perpetuation of the Chinese race and stamp 
 through every mutation of time. To be happy in the indefinitely 
 living spirit, reproduction is absolutely essential. So the most earnest 
 Chinese have reproduced, and the clearly recognizable race is still 
 here. The defect in their system is that the individual independence 
 going with intellectual progress must eventually overthrow the 
 foundation of their system. Investigation and reflection must with 
 progress destroy the unprovable belief that the spirit of an ancestor 
 depends in an individual separate existence upon the sacrifices of a 
 descendant. This overthrown, the whole system must fall with it. 
 This Chinese doctrine is far indeed from my idea of an actual im- 
 mortality had by the parent in the child, but there is a suggestion of 
 similarity. 
 
 So the receivers of my view may gain confidence in observing 
 the wonderful persistency of the Chinese race against decay and 
 extermination, although so long in a stationary or reactionary 
 condition. 
 
 Other animal worship may have arisen through the worship of 
 dead chiefs named, as is so common with savages, after animals, and 
 the imperfection of all savage languages in expressing the difference 
 between an animal and a man named after an animal. It is, how- 
 ever, immaterial how the religious idea arose, for the general view 
 remains the same. 
 
 We cannot escape the conclusion that all primitive religions, from 
 
246 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 inchoate dread of ghosts to definite ancestor worship, and so on to a 
 ruling God and a pantheon of subordinate spirits, are of purely 
 human origin. 
 
 The most extreme devotee of form in religion must equally 
 admit that all modem developed religions, but one excepted (his 
 own, of course), have a similar origin. 
 
 It is not conceivable to a reflective person with any brain power, 
 and with the information as to physical and psychological facts now 
 available, that a Supreme Creator would directly transmit or permit 
 to be transmitted to man, His creature, religious information fatal to 
 the everlasting welfare of his soul. It is equally impossible to sup- 
 pose a Divine Creator of the universe capable of leaving the vast 
 majority of humanity in every generation for the long ages of human 
 existence ignorant of doctrines essential to their everlasting salva- 
 tion. We are from the limitations of our reasons driven perforce to 
 attribute a mundane origin to all religions, excepting, perhaps, our 
 own, and, if still clinging to special forms taught us in childhood, to 
 at least admit so wide a tolerance for those who differ with us as to 
 leave the belief in our own doctrines unessential either as to damna- 
 tion or salvation. 
 
 Tolerance is no twin brother to faith. Intense faith must be 
 accompanied by an equal force of intolerance. When a person or 
 people believe that a particular course or doctrine will lead to eternal 
 salvation, or its disregard to eternal damnation, any mundane matter 
 becomes of infinitesimal importance, except as leading to the ever- 
 lasting future. So suffering in this world to reach heaven is a splen- 
 did investment, while joy here and hell hereafter is a bad one. 
 Equally, any suffering imposed on others to everlastingly save them, 
 or to prevent the spread of damning doctrines, is, with faith, 
 thoroughly justifiable. Therefore faith, in proportion to its intensity 
 and political power, will persecute dissent. 
 
 The universal tolerance of our age is consequently a demonstra- 
 tion of the weakness of the old religious forms and the necessity of 
 something different to pervade the lives of our children with a reli- 
 gious ardor. The Christian religion more than any other spiritualizes 
 the unity of mankind, and inculcates a sympathy that is limited only 
 by the limits of life, and takes in the whole human race. 
 
 Its doctrines are distinctly those forming the ideal toward which 
 the highest humanity tends. Its chief weakness in an incredulous 
 and inquiring age lies in its claim of supernatural authority and 
 authorship. Without at all denying the correctness of this claim, 
 we cannot but perceive that the prevaiUng demand for demonstration 
 in all things is extremely exacting for it. 
 
Religion, 247 
 
 It is indeed strange to learn through well authenticated history 
 that this beautiful religion, in which love and sympathy, suiFering 
 and resignation, are foundation pillars, has by its disciples been guilty 
 of the most cruel persecutions often upon technical and trivial points, 
 has sanctioned and preached war for no just reason, has praised and 
 encouraged unsocial and unsympathetic seclusion in the name of 
 religion contrary to the spirit of Christ, and has often, on the other 
 hand, sustained in good standing not only its lay members but even 
 its preachers and leaders while living and practising notorious crime 
 and immorality. 
 
 A perusal of the Gospels and then of the theological dogmas that 
 have been declared by the saints as essential to salvation must sur- 
 prise a thoughtful person. How the one could have come out of the 
 other is most curious. The confusion of contradiction amongst 
 Christians in their catechisms and the practices of the pious as pro- 
 fessing Christians are certainly inexplicable as originating from 
 divine inspiration. The leaders of our Christian sects, as a rule, no 
 longer have a full conviction in the truth of their technicalities. 
 When they had this, the humanity consigned to everlasting hell by 
 these pious persons would cast into the shadow the doings of a demon. 
 In fact, no other religion has painted so uncertain, black, and hope- 
 less a picture of the future as the Christian. Some sect always had 
 a door open direct to hell for the trembling votary. If the rules of 
 one Church were followed, the very fact condemned the individual to 
 everlasting damnation by the rules of another. To go forward, to 
 go backward, or to stand still was alike damnable according to 
 some saint. Thus we can observe the difficulties and uncertainties 
 of every religion or rule of conduct derived from an interference of 
 God Almighty through man. 
 
 Some of the prevalent doctrines of Christianity are worthy of ex- 
 amination to indicate that their votaries may mistake a true inter- 
 pretation of the Gospels. Let us see what they say. Salvation 
 can only come by faith, not by deeds. Man is incapable of self- 
 salvation, and can only hope for it through the vicarious sacrifice 
 of Christ. Any amount of sin may be obliterated and the soul 
 snowed into whiteness by the superabundant virtues of another. 
 These votaries set up as the ideals of life resignation, mercy, and to 
 do unto others as you would have them do unto you ; resignation 
 and submission in peace to outrage, wrong, oppression, to anything, 
 even unto death ; if smitten on one cheek, turn the other. These 
 votaries are probably wrong in taking the text upon which these 
 views are based too literally. These doctrines have not and cannot 
 be lived up to in any society that has existed since the Crucifixion. 
 
248 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 As to salvation coming only by faith, how shall faith be demon- 
 strated except by deeds ? If this be accepted, salvation coming by 
 faith comes by deeds. In the matter of obliterating sin, the Old 
 Testament tells us what we know in our daily experience to be true 
 — that the sins of the fathers shall be visited on the children to the 
 third and fourth generation of them that hate Me. They are not 
 washed away by a profession of faith. The vicarious sacrifice, as 
 understood by many, would make the perfect life one of dreams, en- 
 thusiasm, and inaction. It did so in the Dark Ages. Resignation 
 and meekness carried to extremes lead to nothing. We cannot be 
 resigned to wrong without reaping ruin as a harvest. The brother- 
 hood of man is another idea completely misunderstood. As it is 
 often comprehended, we might with equal truth speak of the brother- 
 hood of the primates, the brotherhood of mammals, the brotherhood 
 of life, the brotherhood of matter ; all true, but not leading to the 
 conclusions adduced by the saints from the first. We might also 
 allege the brotherhood of dogs as a reason for receiving the cur and 
 the collie on an equal footing ; we might assert the brotherhood of 
 equines as a reason for placing the ass in the stable of the thorough- 
 bred. 
 
 In doing unto others as you would have them do unto you, who, 
 we may ask, would ever be imprisoned, hung, or in any way pun- 
 ished? The rule is good in a sensible interpretation, but it is 
 nothing when run into extremity. 
 
 So the professors of Christianity through mistaken zeal have 
 rushed or been pushed into no thoroughfares, into impossible im- 
 passes where conduct conformable to conscience was ruin, and where 
 denial was damnation. 
 
 Christianity is a religion of love. Its Gospels are full of parables 
 and allegories, and should be interpreted as to what they are and in 
 harmony with common sense. It is a sufferer from the deformities 
 that have been imposed on it. Its superserviceable devotees by the 
 impossible positions in which they place themselves live in contradic- 
 tion to their professions. They set up a standard that brings before 
 us a set of rank hypocrites. Good men and true live oppressed in 
 their souls from the recognition of the incompatibility of creed and 
 of human duty. 
 
 In the French Revolution the beautiful and useful doctrines of 
 Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity were preached, received, and acted 
 on by a whole nation. But men ran to a wild extremity. Their 
 excesses turned truth into a lie. Liberty became license. Equality 
 pulled down the superior only to make rulers of the incompetent or 
 cruel. Fraternity presided over the guillotine, the Noyades, and 
 
Religion, 249 
 
 the massacre of the best lives of France, including even founders of 
 the Republic, and still worse of even women, children, and babes at 
 the breast. Thus great and progressive doctrines in incompetent 
 hands became the cause of the worst reign of terror civilized man 
 has known. 
 
 Man cannot live by terror, and so the reaction came with a 
 Napoleon, as it must have come with some one. Thus we may per- 
 ceive from the inj ustice and cruelty of crime committed in the name 
 of the brotherhood of man the danger of extreme and technical 
 interpretation of a great and true doctrine. 
 
 Every great leader of early man has claimed a divine or demoniac 
 origin for his rules and regulations. In the weakness of htunan 
 reason this was doubtless necessary and may be still. Its incon- 
 venience lies in its contradictions. Moses and Mahomet, Buddha 
 and Brahma, Confucius and Christ, cannot be reconciled. How can 
 the evidence of like miraculous kind be deemed more authentic in 
 one than in another? If we deny the revelation of the Mormon 
 prophet, Smith ; if we deny the passage of Mahomet through the 
 rock at the call of God, a rock with its manhole still visible to the 
 curious, how shall we admit the inspiration of Moses or of any one ? 
 
 The most curious circumstance in the consideration of this matter 
 is that not a single, solitary sect known to me lives to-day up to 
 the exact letter of the revelation from God upon which its rules are 
 foimded. We may dismiss a dangerous discussion with the admis- 
 sion that all religions, or all but one, each person excepting his own, 
 were founded by man, who, to secure conformity to his plans by the 
 ignorant mass, invoked the general floating belief originating from 
 dreams and unexplained phenomena of nature in a spiritual world, 
 and set up moral and material laws said to emanate from the Ruler 
 of the Universe. Such laws -were in reality the creation of a great 
 human mind bent on improving his race, the world, or of advancing 
 a personal ambition. We can thus understand how codes suited to 
 the savage, the barbarian, or the civilized man were invented as the 
 race required them, and further understand how every code has been 
 modified often beyond recognition to suit the growth of man or the 
 change of his circumstances or condition. 
 
 Thus what is good and advantageous in a savage state of society 
 may be injurious in a civilized condition, and consequently as a 
 savage race advances its moral code must change. 
 
 The great leader hke Moses or Mahomet invokes God or Devil to 
 sanction the innovation necessary for advance, and in this way 
 secures a conformity that at least amongst primitive men could be 
 secured in no other manner. The philosopher should consider the 
 
250 The Conquest of Death. 
 
 general use of the invocation of supernatural authority to secure 
 morality. The fact that mankind has never continued sound with- 
 out a religion in form founded on Divine reward or demoniac 
 punishment, and that decay in religion has been accompanied here- 
 tofore first by a hectic flush and rush of intellectual advance, followed 
 in every case by social disease, decay, and death, should make us 
 slow in attacking any religious forms. 
 
 The emergence into histor>^ of every race has shown it to be 
 devoted to religious observance. So in extremes, or when immor- 
 ality has almost extirpated the people, it may also be observed that 
 the grossest superstition and the most devoted duty to the ritual is 
 the rule of the survivors. The escape from the formality of faith to 
 freedom and reason finds man in the middle career. He comes to 
 this point at or near the highest of his achievement and holds to it at 
 least for a time on the thus far inevitable reaction. 
 
 In each of such of these numerous epochs of advance and retro- 
 gression we find man going a little higher in his glory and achieve- 
 ment, and falling a little less low in the reaction. On the whole 
 then man must be advancing, and also we may say that the advance 
 in each case is becoming more widely diffused and affects a larger 
 class. 
 
 So the general doctrines of the faith have lived, while those not 
 appropriate to the advance or change of society have been overthrown 
 or left as dead letters. 
 
 In matters of revealed religion a facility for fraud is unfortunately 
 found. A communion with God may be claimed by any one, for 
 such communion is not susceptible of scientific proof even in the 
 admitted saint. We cannot secure a conformity of belief in any 
 religious dogma similar to that which we may secure for the law of 
 gravitation. 
 
 The first is a declaration incapable of demonstration, while the 
 other may be proved without regard to time or place, and cannot 
 escape reception wherever intelligence has reached even an ordinary 
 advance above the most primitive types. 
 
 The old dictionary definition of religion becomes inadequate to 
 convey any enlarged idea of religion. " Religion is a belief which 
 induces morality. ' ' This definition carries with it the idea that the 
 morality induced requires neither political law nor the opinion of 
 society for its practice. 
 
 The belief that religion is necessary for man, together with the 
 doubt as to the permanent acceptance of any religion dependent on 
 faith and not capable of demonstration, is the cause of setting forth 
 these views. 
 
Religion. 251 
 
 What we need is a religion or belief capable of demonstration. 
 Such a belief is the one I offer to my children. It is the body im- 
 mortality secured by reproduction. 
 
 One should not consider the immortality of the body through 
 reproduction to be in any conflict with the immortality of the soul. 
 
 The one is a belief based on demonstrable fact ; the other is a faith 
 founded on revelation. A belief in the first will conduce to conduct 
 that will insure the soul salvation of the second. 
 
 In an}^ case, what better work could one of holy life do than to 
 procreate a line of souls to be saved ? Given a holy life, the pre- 
 sumption is that such a life will impress the progeny, and that, other 
 things being equal, such children will be more likely to be saved 
 through goodness than the children of bad parents, like, let us say, 
 the children of the celebrated criminal family of Juke in New York. 
 It would appear then that the holy ought not to be satisfied with 
 their own sterility and extermination, leaving the world to the domi- 
 nation of the damned. Such a course would certainly diminish the 
 proportion of souls saved and increase the proportion of souls lost 
 through all time. 
 
 Good conduct without faith is not sufficient for soul salvation 
 according to most religious creeds, but faith and good works is 
 according to all a good combination. Good works then are to be 
 encouraged, and those who, doing good works, have children in turn 
 inclined by inherited qualities to do good works, should be encouraged 
 in reproduction. 
 
 A belief in a possible human improvement through improvement 
 of one's self, perpetuated and intensified in one's children, each gen- 
 eration seeking improvement for the sake of improvement in the 
 children to succeed them, and so on toward perfection, may help 
 faith-religions, and certainly has no element to hinder them. The 
 Roman Catholics carry out my ideas in this respect as to their laity. 
 Their confessional and rules for the married oppose all practices 
 leading to sterility and encourage child-bearing. The care with 
 which the priesthood seek to control the religious training of the 
 young leaves us no doubt as to the objects of their rules for the 
 wife. Every child is another soul to be saved, and another glory 
 to the Saviour. 
 
 A reward or punishment for good or evil is as a rule felt by the 
 individual, immediately as well as remotely, in some form or other. 
 Our deeds and thoughts recorded in our minds and bodies for good 
 or evil and going to modify our individuality are reflected from us 
 and appear in our undefinable expressions. 
 
 Thus persons of evil life but beautiful in form and feature repel 
 
252 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 us and become ugly from the thoughts and deeds recorded in their 
 expressions ; on the other hand, plain persons may become attrac- 
 tive, nay beautiful, from the goodness shining out of them. Every- 
 one's deeds and life are to be found in their expressions. As the 
 face is deformed by evil or beautified by good deeds, so also is the 
 mind. In the end we may presume that a perfect beauty of face and 
 form will only be found with a perfect beauty of thought and action. 
 Evil diminishes the power for greatness. It weakens. Truth gives 
 strength. Our mental as well as bodily health depends on our being 
 in harmony with truth. To achieve the most that is in us we must 
 be moral. This motive and the good or bad opinion of society are not 
 enough to make an earnest belief leading to good deeds and away 
 from bad ones. 
 
 The effect of our actions on our children may do so when we per- 
 ceive the results of our morality on them and appreciate the renewed 
 existence achieved in progeny. 
 
 Every bad thought or act must leave its trace on the mind or 
 body, and lower one's renewed life in any subsequent child. Thus 
 is established a future punishment. This punishment can be proved 
 as certainly as can the doctrine of gravitation. Every good and 
 noble thought and action will leave its trace and improve one's im- 
 mortality in the subsequent child. Thus is established future 
 reward — a reward perfectly provable. 
 
 The child is the parents united and renewed. There is no doubt 
 of this. Here then is a sequence of demonstrable beliefs that are no 
 more attackable than is the revolution of the earth around the sun. 
 These beliefs cannot be held by any one without leading to a desire 
 for immortality in the child and to a desire by a moral life to improve 
 oneself as renewed in the child. The child is the new life of its 
 parents. It is their immortality. This new life is the parents fused. 
 According to their forces the parents' life-renewal will be good or 
 bad, weak or strong. The parents have the power to govern this 
 their future in a great measure. If their bodies are kept in health, 
 the presumption is for bodily health in the child. If their bodies are 
 diseased, disease must be expected in the child. So also in matters 
 of the mind: we may have health and strength or disease and weakness 
 in the intellect according to the condition of the parents. Every- 
 thing tells. As it is our future life, our immortality that is at stake, 
 so must the value of every act and even thought become appreciated. 
 An earnest and intense life devoted to improvement is more produc- 
 tive and profitable with this belief than with any other. To secure 
 immortality in the child a large family is necessary to guard against 
 accident and inevitable dangers. A large family is one of the best 
 
Religion. 253 
 
 means of inducing and guarding morality that we have. From every 
 point of view it would appear that a belief in the spirit or soul, as 
 well as in the physical likeness of the child to the parents, giving the 
 idea of a material and immediate immortality, the condition, hopes, 
 and future of which depend on the parents' acts, would lead to a 
 religious life with high aims and a pure morality. 
 
 Life's object is not cultivation, not content, not wealth, not indi- 
 vidual greatness. It is the development of power for progress to the 
 future of perfection. We can only gain this through the child from 
 our own loins. To secure this improvement of self in the child our 
 highest capacities must be used. We have this reason, then, aside 
 from any other, for good and great action. Most religions preach 
 content either here or in a heaven. The most perfect conception of 
 content is the Nirvana of the East, and the nearest approach we make 
 to it in life is in sleep. As we do nothing in sleep, so we do nothing 
 by content. Discontent is the spur of progress. Content leads to 
 nothing. It cannot exist with ambition nor even with any desire for 
 improvement for such desire must grow from discontent. This fre- 
 quent idea in religion must be denounced. Teach every one to look 
 for and glory in discontent, and still to use its power with due discre- 
 tion. Declamatory discontent in small household or personal matters 
 is an error so complete as to come close to crime ; while discontent 
 in large things is the spur to improvement. 
 
 All living religions have a great deal that is good and useful in 
 them to the peoples and conditions where they are received. Con- 
 sequently missionary work to replace one with another where the 
 people's conditions are not the same is of doubtful value. The rule 
 shotdd be to let people's religions alone. 
 
 The form of any religion may be followed that does not interfere 
 with or discourage reproduction. Any doctrine of this latter kind 
 should be condemned out of hand in your own family. One may, 
 however, preach with perfect propriety a religion to those who have 
 none. A large proportion of Americans have no religion. Thus it 
 is seen that in our country there is an ample field for missionary 
 work. 
 
 The missionary work most essential in America for its material 
 welfare is something in the line of this work. We certainly could 
 spread with advantage some doctrine that would diminish divorce, 
 that woiild make marriage happier, and that would secure our patriot- 
 ism in the expectation that the generations succeeding us will be 
 Americans not only in name but by descent from our own loins. 
 
 Immortality in the child is a fact. Its thorough conception upon 
 the highest plane cannot but lead to good. 
 
254 '^^^ Conquest of Death, 
 
 Never be a monk, a fakir, or a fool ; but have children and 
 assure your continued life and continued youth and participation 
 in future glory. It cannot be that the death we see striking right and 
 left and which we know will one day strike us, will kill completeh". 
 No, if we follow the road God has marked out we will gain immor- 
 tality and we will not die. We may catch a glimpse of that road 
 that our poor senses can comprehend and realize and believe. It is 
 our children. I hope for other immortality, but this I understand 
 and can harmonize with what I know of what has taken place and 
 what is taking place. 
 
 Every one should have a religion. Religion is necessary to every 
 one. Intellect makes religion possible, and with each increase of 
 brain in man true religion may become truer and stronger. Its forms 
 are many and are suited to the intellectual grasp of those who hold 
 them, though not alwaj^s best suited to their changing conditions 
 and to their progress. Religious forms, like all the institutions of 
 man and more than any of the others, tend to fixity and oppose 
 change. 
 
 Whatever form religion takes, it is but an expression of the 
 universal craving of man for something better, purer, and grander 
 than he at present knows. When the forms have been pervxrted and 
 used by the designing for their own profit and aggrandizement, we 
 must overlook these passing defects, and study the reason and core 
 of the religion which is afilicted by them. Religion has been and will 
 be an important aid to the progress of mankind. True religion is 
 devoted to truth, and is capable of any sacrifice to find it and secure 
 it. Too often, alas, truth has been opposed by corrupt and antiquated 
 forms whose followers arrogated to themselves to be the onlj^ religion. 
 Every real scientific man is a light of religion and has a heart full of 
 it though he may follow no creed or form. 
 
 While some are capable of thus standing alone, and by so stand- 
 ing gain in breadth and power, in mental grasp and feeling, the 
 great mass of mankind is still doubtless dependent on form. In 
 Hgypt the instructed priests had a religion for themselves involving 
 a belief in one God, and for the people another with many allegorical 
 forms and many gods. The conditions justifying this, if they ever 
 existed, still exist, for even where the nominal forms are the same, as 
 in the Catholic Church, the different grades of people adhering to 
 that faith have created a practically different religion within the fold 
 each for itself. Thus we have the extremes of the Neapolitan devo- 
 tee of St. Januarius demanding the liquefaction of the dead saint's 
 blood on pain of stoning his statue, on the one hand, and, on the 
 
Religion. 255 
 
 other, St. George Mivart, the scientific writer, holding for a freedom 
 of research that would have called for excommunication in the 
 Middle Ages. 
 
 So forms must exist for a long time yet, and they are still neces- 
 ;sary. Reverence these then for that of which they are the emblem. 
 
 In the Hindoo religion there is held a doctrine of progression. 
 The sinner at death according to his sin goes back in the chain of 
 evolution and recommences life in some animal, to return to man 
 again only after ages of probation. 
 
 In my doctrine there is but one sin that so condemns man. This 
 is the absence of progeny. A sterile man or woman at death is the 
 unpardonable sinner. Ages of progress have combined the atoms in 
 him or her in a wonderful complexity, and given them an identity 
 which we may call soul, together with a capacity for reproduction 
 and improvement. The sterile in exterminating themselves shatter 
 this, the work of ages, and sin beyond redemption. 
 
 Like the Hindoo, the religions of the past and of to-day have 
 much to admire and to imitate. 
 
 While I counsel reverence to religious form, I equally counsel 
 you to avoid it as a faith. The danger of all religious forms is that 
 man so often comes to regard the form as the religion. When this 
 happens man's spirit dwindles, progress stops, and religion is lost. 
 Let form, as a faith, alone in religion, for it is but the skin of it. 
 Make truth the guiding star of your lives, and never fear to follow 
 where it leads. Immortality by the child is the core for your 
 religion. 
 
 A great deal of the religious thought of man has been devoted to 
 things he knew nothing about. As might be supposed, dogmas 
 about unknowable subjects were incapable of securing the unity of 
 faith we have, as has been said, in the law of gravitation. The bit- 
 terest contest, the bloodiest wars, and the most cruel tortures have 
 been caused by religious disputes about subjects which neither side 
 had any capacity of comprehending. 
 
 / We can neither think of God nor picture to ourselves what such 
 a being could be, nor can we think of the universe without a cause 
 and without a commencement, and here again we are confronted 
 with the unthinkable character of a first cause without a beginning 
 and without a cause. So we find ourselves in a vicious circle, in 
 which the complacent ass may trudge blindfolded by dogmatic state- 
 ment, but from which the wise man will flee. 
 
 The defect, to my mind, in most modem religions is that they 
 deal too much with another world of which we know nothing, and 
 
256 The Conquest of Death, 
 
 neglect a study of present conditions, which are capable of compre- 
 hension. Some of these, to me idle doctrines, may have done good. 
 For instance, the dogma, so frequently found, of a hell or place of 
 everlasting torture in which worldly sin will be punished, may have 
 prevented the ignorant from sins that otherwise would have been 
 committed. A great deal of ingenuity has been devoted to picturing 
 the kinds of punishment that would take place in this unending hell, 
 of which we are all perfectly and completely ignorant. Milton knew 
 nothing of it, nor did Dante, nor does any one. The things we know 
 of sin and its punishment would better occupy us than such idle 
 speculations. 
 
 If we sin against nature we are always punished : first, directly 
 in this world ; and secondly, again in all children conceived subse- 
 quent to the sin, we are still punished and still in this world. Each 
 act of ours and, doubtless too, our thoughts are at every moment 
 moulding us and giving a stamp which will pass to our children. 
 A drunkard's child must suffer for its father's sin ; thus the drimkard 
 again suffers in his child what he at first suffered in himself. 
 
 It seems tome that this doctrine, so easily proven, would be more 
 conducive to morality than some fantastic picture of a sulphurous 
 pit without bottom, and which, after all, may be avoided by acts of 
 repentance. With innumerable short cuts from the broad path full 
 of pleasure to the narrow, thorny way, there is little wonder that the 
 business man takes all the broad path and forbidden pleasure consist- 
 ent with taking the last possible short cut to the straight and disa- 
 greeable path. His position in heaven is rather improved than 
 otherwise by such a course. The truth is, nature never forgives. 
 
 For what you do you must take the consequences. There is no 
 repentance that can avoid the results of deeds already done. The 
 best that we can do is, by wise deeds to counteract the results of fool- 
 ish ones, and, as we live and learn, to suppress the foolish deeds and do 
 only wise ones. A man knowing that his act of sin is a permanent 
 injury to him and stamps and lowers his character will avoid such sin 
 much more than if he believed that some subsequent act could 
 entirely wi^e away its results. 
 
 There is other sin than sin against nature. This is sin against 
 society, and it may be against a written or an unwritten regulation 
 of man made for the general good. The punishment of a sin against 
 the laws and customs of man, but which is not a sin against nature, 
 is to a considerable extent dependent on whether it is found out, but 
 not altogether. We are generally educated and impressed from 
 youth up with the necessity of observing the regulations of the 
 
Religion, 257 
 
 society in which we live, and we consequently suffer more in con- 
 science from a violation of man's rules than we do from a violation 
 of nature'? Thus we may suffer much from a sin against society 
 though it ■ >e not found out. It is also to be noted that many, in fact 
 most, sins igainst society are, if not injurious to oneself directly, at 
 least so to meself renewed in the child. An injury to society, the 
 medium uj on the conservation of which our social activity depends, 
 must eventually injure us in our descendants. There is a good deal 
 of dovetailing between these two classes of sins, but attention is called 
 to the difference now because the unforgivable and most fatal sins — 
 that is, those against nature — are often considered venial, while the 
 less important and not necessarily injurious sins — that is, those 
 against the rules of man — are considered as serious or deadly. 
 
 Thus a man or woman who spreads syphilis is left free to curse 
 generations that follow them. Constitutional and preventible diseases 
 are spread broadcast every day, and those committing this sin against 
 nature are termed in society, if any attention is paid to the circum- 
 stance, unfortunate. On the other hand, a hungry person taking a 
 loaf of bread is jailed, and a man walking into a field that some one 
 has enclosed and calls his by a convention of society is arrested for 
 trespass. Religion should deal with those sins, and they the most 
 fatal, with which man has been unable to cope by law. 
 
 The present system of ethics has many points susceptible of im- 
 provement. Such a rule, for instance, as the one that a wife who 
 has an ' ' incompatibility of temper " is a sinner and may be divorced, 
 while a wife who refuses to bear children, or is incapable of having 
 them, is all right, and against her fatal sin — her sin that exterminates 
 both herself and her husband — the husband has no remedy, is the 
 ruling of the monumental ass. 
 
 Children are a religion for any one. To improve your own life as 
 renewed in the child is, when understood, a motive that will draw 
 from evil and lead to the true and good. As soon as a human being 
 thoroughly realizes that every excess and every crime must be ex- 
 piated by the child, and perhaps by the child's child of his or her 
 own loins, for many generations, such aberrations will become rare. 
 And equally, when knowing the character stamp of good acts and 
 noble thoughts, and the physical, intellectual, and moral improve- 
 ment in the child's nature by such improvements in one's self, a 
 human being must attach an importance to a sound and true life that 
 nothing else will give. 
 
 Every true man has a religion. Every such person has a standard 
 of right, which is followed irrespective of direct enforcement. In 
 
258 ' The Conquest of Death, 
 
 fact, practically all humanity has such a standard, though it be nar- 
 row, or perhaps bad for the general public. We have honor even 
 amongst thieves. A man without religion is a man without sym- 
 pathy. He is like an oak with the heart rotted out. He may be fair 
 externally, but he is a sepulchre within. He can only stand in fine 
 weather ; when the storm comes he will be beaten down. 
 
 For success we must have earnestness. For earnestness we must 
 have a belief. Therefore, to use our capacities to their best, we need 
 a religion. It may be in heaven, in hell, in liberty, in honor, as in 
 the days of chivalry, or what not. But some overmastering motive 
 from belief in something we must have for the full realization of our 
 possibilities. 
 
 This Religion of Children offers such a motive. A religious man 
 in this view is one with a high standard of right, which he follows, 
 without the compulsion of written or unwritten law, for the sake of 
 himself in his child. The basis of this true religion is life, its con- 
 tinuance, and, above all, its improvement. This true religion fol- 
 lowed is to so live that the noble thoughts and good acts of our lives 
 will be ingrained in our children by inheritance, and place them 
 upon a plane from which improved lives will flow. So by reproduc- 
 tion we multiply and may improve our life and fasten fortune for the 
 future. It is in our children, ourselves renewed and immortalized, 
 that we have tangible means of enjoying true religion. 
 
 A person without children exterminates himself, and, as far as he 
 is concerned, has no chance to perpetuate or to improve the life-flame 
 confided to his care. This is the unpardonable sin. It is the 
 blackest in the category. For sterility there is neither repentance 
 nor forgiveness. The spirit of the father or mother passes on in the 
 child to do the work of perfecting humanity, and to carry the father 
 and mother on for countless ages to pick the fruit from the lives 
 whose seeds planted in the unfathomed past have been so long strug- 
 gling toward perfection. The spirit of the sterile is thrust by death 
 into outer darkness. 
 
 Religion demands the child. Children are a religion. The home 
 is the holy of holies. It is the true church. The parent is the priest. 
 Immortality is in the child, and paradise is the perfection to which 
 by procreation we progress without plan or perception. 
 
 Has not the time come when a plan is possible ? L<et us believe 
 it. We can with such a belief take the world and its details into a 
 broad conception, and instead of being sunk into ruts of routine or 
 confused in complex circumstance, we may treat the incidents of life 
 as the means through the child to reach to gladness and to glory. 
 
Religion, 259 
 
 When the human ^%% is fertilized the Phoenix is rampant. In 
 reproduction we deride the dark demon of death. Hope and youth 
 and life are bom again in the child. With each new flame of life, 
 with each new descendant, we renew ourselves in reproduction. 
 With each new child we create a new sun and system in the heavens 
 of our immortality, and by so much are we fixed faster in this 
 firmament of fortime. 
 
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
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 UNIVERSITY OF CAWJE^(RNIA LIBRlARY