UCSB LIBRARY 
 
 y
 
 Woman and the Race 
 
 By 
 
 Gordon Hart 
 
 PBICE $1, POSTPAID 
 
 PUBLISHED AT TUB ABIBL PR EBB 
 
 WEBTWOOD, MASS., U.S.A.
 
 Copyright 1907 
 By George Elmer Littlefleld
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAOB 
 
 I. INNOCENCE VERSUS IGNORANCE ... 7 
 
 II. FLOWER BABIES ........ 30 
 
 III. WOMAN'S PLACE IN THE SOCIAL SCHEME 50 
 
 IV. MOTHERHOOD A JOY 72 
 
 V. A REAL PATERNITY 102 
 
 VI. THE PERFECT BODY 124 
 
 VII. KING MIND 163 
 
 VIII. THE RATIONALE OF CELIBACY . . . 183 
 
 IX. MARRIAGE ACTUAL AND IDEAL . . 207 
 
 X. THE JOY OF LIFE 248
 
 HOSE who are looking for Truth, who 
 
 follow her, footsore and buffetted, 
 Through devious ways and into the 
 wilderness, 
 
 Disdaining alike the pain of personal wounds and 
 the scorn of those who pass by, 
 
 Are likely, from their very vehemence and indiffer- 
 ence to martyrdom, 
 
 To die violent social deaths. 
 
 This is not a misfortune. 
 
 Since the earliest life of man the death or dis- 
 grace of the few 
 
 Has purchased Truth for the unseeing many. 
 
 Let it be so ; we have no quarrel with the scheme 
 of things. 
 
 The millions of the majority will continue to cry : 
 " Crucify ! " 
 
 While they profit by the riches that fall from the 
 men at whom they hoot. 
 
 And Jesus and Galileo turn upon them looks of 
 gentleness 
 
 And words of pitying parable, 
 
 And continue their communing with the Unknown, 
 serene and unmoved ; 
 
 For they know, as all seekers after Truth know at 
 last, 
 
 That at the bottom of all her mysteries, lies Love. 
 
 He is greatest who loves most; 
 
 And evil and pain and disgrace must be loved out 
 of existence ;
 
 And this is the only way. 
 
 Legislation, punishment, public opinion, 
 
 These are as shadow and north winds to the ailing 
 plant. 
 
 What it needs is the sun, strong, warm, invigor- 
 ating. 
 
 This is what the unfortunate need. 
 
 What does that sorrowing woman need with her 
 eyes upon the ground? 
 
 Love, love, and more love ; 
 
 The arms of a fellow-woman about her, 
 
 Whispers of sisterhood, 
 
 A finger pointed to a future of glad possibilities. 
 
 What does the brazen evil-doer need, man as well 
 as woman? 
 
 Love, love, love. 
 
 That, in its light, things base and insufficient may 
 shovv themselves truly, 
 
 And hands be stretched for the best. 
 
 It is not more knowledge that we need ; it is more 
 love.
 
 TO 
 THE YOUNG WOMEN OF AMERICA 
 
 HO take pride in sound and beautiful 
 bodies which are required for their own 
 perfection of womanhood and the needs 
 of the race; 
 
 Who believe that all God's laws are wise and 
 lovely, and who, therefore, are not afraid to 
 study the needs of their own natures, nor ashamed 
 to avow them ; 
 
 Who believe in Love and the beauty of mutual 
 service ; 
 
 Who realize that a childish dependence and an un- 
 trained or frivolous mind are unfavorable to the 
 advancement of womanhood and therefore to the 
 progress of the world ; 
 
 Who glory in their fully-understood femininity, and 
 who will not rest till they stand in the eyes of 
 society upon the level ground of a moral equality 
 with the men they love; 
 
 Who recognize the bearing and rearing of children 
 as their highest duty and their supreme joy ; 
 
 This book is earnestly and affectionately dedicated.
 
 INNOCENCE VERSUS IGNORANCE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 N spite of the distinct and 
 powerful changes that, in the 
 last half-century, have drawn 
 woman from her snail-shell 
 of credulous, acquiescent de- 
 pendence into the open air 
 of a reasonable affranchisement, we cannot 
 confidently assume that she is fully alive 
 to her position. 
 
 In the world of thought, as in the scheme 
 of heredity, man is distinctly the radical and 
 progressive, woman the conservative and 
 persisting element. Our social and religious 
 reformers among womankind, with all their 
 adherents and imitators, from the highest to 
 the lowest, constitute but a handful of peb- 
 bles from the sea-shore of a submissive and 
 tradition-ridden femininity. 
 
 Woman for the most part, are content to 
 be ignorant; satisfied with the mere smat- 
 tering of a subject; happy with a few catch- 
 words and phrases, and the repetition of the 
 thoughts of others; afraid to express an
 
 8 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 opinion of a book or play until some rec- 
 ognized authority has given his verdict; 
 dependent upon the decisions of another 
 for so-called personal convictions. 
 
 A well-known woman scientist once said 
 to me: "I have given up trying to teach 
 women anything; they only want 'A, B, 
 C's;' I have got as far as the 'Ab, Abs,' 
 now; but I can't find any other women who 
 care to go on to the 'a, b,-abs.'" 
 
 When women are no longer contented 
 with superficial learning, with mere surface 
 investigation, with unsustained impulse, with 
 borrowed thoughts, then shall we have in 
 our feminine half of mankind the deep 
 thinkers, the real students that the world 
 expects and needs. 
 
 It would almost seem as if women prided 
 themselves upon certain forms of ignorance. 
 The average woman's knowledge of her own 
 physical make-up, and of the needs of her 
 body, is, in its meagreness, out of all pro- 
 portion to her knowledge on less impor- 
 tant matters. 
 
 Imagine, if you can, a woman starting to 
 run a sewing machine with a dim notion 
 of its requirements, a vague idea as to the 
 modus operandi. She has heard that a ma-
 
 INNOCENCE VERSUS IGNORANCE 9 
 
 chine requires oiling, so she occasionally 
 pours a cupful of oil over the entire in- 
 strument. She turns the wheel sometimes 
 in one direction, sometimes in another. It 
 would seem inevitable that, after this 
 treatment has many times resulted in soiled 
 and ill-sewn work, the lesson would be 
 learned. And so we will suppose it is, after 
 the mechanism is twisted and distorted, the 
 machine rendered hopelessly unfit for future 
 use. We will suppose that the machine, 
 being solidly put together, occasionally 
 turns out fairly good work in spite of mis- 
 use and abuse; and that the worker, having 
 harmed her own machine, with the glim- 
 mering of an idea that some mistake has 
 been made, advises the novice to inform 
 herself as to the management of her bright 
 new instrument. All this sounds like ab- 
 surdity. Some one says: "No woman would 
 be so foolish." Perhaps not, with a sew- 
 ing-machine! 
 
 Of the delicate mechanism of the human 
 body, the thing materially speaking, of 
 paramount importance to a woman, of its 
 requisite nourishment, of the requirements 
 of its development and the essentials to a 
 healthy condition, of these she is profound- 
 ly and wilfully ignorant.
 
 10 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 She has heard some one speak of a liver 
 that was out of order, so she knows that 
 somewhere she has a liver; sometimes, pre- 
 sumably because of an inherent malevolence, 
 it gets out of order; its place in the body, 
 or its functions, are not her affair. If the 
 stomach, of which she has a vague notion, 
 refuses to submit without protest to a lunch 
 of oyster patties, lobster salad, and eclairs, 
 she is a hardly-used and deeply-afflicted 
 member of society; and if a continued diet 
 of this description results in anemia and in- 
 digestion, drugs and stimulants are resorted 
 to; and that panacea of the rich a change 
 of air is deemed essential to the poor 
 sufferer. 
 
 It may be contended with some show of 
 justice, that ignorance of this kind is not 
 confined to one sex; at the same time it 
 cannot be gainsaid that the ignorance of 
 women in these matters, as the caterers for 
 the family, and the governors of the house- 
 hold, as the educators of the children, and 
 especially as the more deeply-concerned 
 and responsible of the two in the matter 
 of parentage, is by far the more serious 
 concern. 
 
 The average society woman delights in
 
 INNOCENCE VERSUS IGNORANCF II 
 
 fashion, and has pressed the stomach a 
 number of inches below where it belongs, 
 crowded down the intestines, and pushed 
 the reproductive organs out of place with 
 a tight corset; and when the time comes 
 for her to fulfil her natural function and 
 bear children, she wails in agony to a God 
 whose laws she has persistently disregarded 
 to relieve her of a punishment for which 
 she alone is responsible. 
 
 Thus it is that, while maternity should 
 be a joy and a pride, it is seemingly looked 
 upon in the majority of cases in the Amer- 
 ica of today as a calamity calling for con- 
 dolence, a "visitation of Providence" to be 
 ranked with diphtheria and typhoid. 
 
 We must not forget, in thus arraigning 
 the sex, that reform in this direction is be- 
 ing vigorously prosecuted, that a hundred 
 are today studying and endeavoring to better 
 conditions where in the past there was 
 but one; that physiology is taught in our 
 public schools with a reality and interest 
 unknown in days gone by. The leaven is 
 working, but the lump is solid. 
 
 To the average man and woman, we are 
 driven to believe, the idea of sex is of a 
 thing that is low and unmentionable: the
 
 12 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 very word suggests a blush. The physical 
 differences between a man and a woman, 
 their mutual attraction and its design in na- 
 ture, these are subjects to be tabooed, 
 treated as if non-existent, carefully elimi- 
 nated from the teaching of a child. The 
 child of today is the father or mother of 
 the race of tomorrow. In what way does 
 he learn of the laws governing reproduction, 
 of sex-differences and sex-impulses? He 
 picks his information out of the gutter. The 
 things his parents are ashamed to speak of 
 to him he learns, greedily enough, it may 
 be, from the coarse mind of a servant, or 
 from the unwholesome imaginings of an older 
 boy at school ; learns of them in a way to 
 debase his coming manhood, to leave his 
 mind the prey of evil images, his body an in- 
 strument for suggested and secret vice. 
 
 The most important of all our social actions 
 is the one on which educators are uniformly 
 silent; the only temptations that are inevi- 
 table to a boy are the only ones for which 
 he is totally unprepared by any wise in- 
 struction on the part of parent or teacher. 
 Surely this is the veriest folly. Do we im- 
 agine that knowledge of sex-life will be 
 hidden from a child because we are too
 
 INNOCENCE VERSUS IGNORANCF 13 
 
 prudish or too stupid to give it to him? 
 Or do we imagine that the legitimate knowl- 
 edge will filter into his brain as the air does 
 into his lungs? 
 
 Many parents who really wish to do their 
 duty in this regard make the mistake of fear- 
 ing to put into the minds of their children 
 thoughts that would not otherwise come to 
 them. If this were a danger, if it were a 
 question as to whether a child should be 
 kept in ignorance of his bodily functions or 
 be made acquainted with them, whether he 
 should be forewarned against inevitable 
 temptation or left to meet it without pre- 
 vious teaching, there might be ground for 
 an argument in favor of ignorance. There 
 is no such question. The very small child 
 has a growing curiosity, natural and legiti- 
 mate; if he goes to his parents with his 
 questions and they are met by equivocations, 
 he will know it and take his difficulties else- 
 where; if they are met by lies he will speed- 
 ily find it out, and his old faith in his 
 parents will be gone for ever. Suppose him 
 to be an unimaginative child, incurious, and 
 unlikely to trouble himself to inquire else- 
 where for answers to questions that have 
 been set aside at home; there are ninety-
 
 14 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 nine chances in a hundred that an evil-mind- 
 ed companion will pull the veil rudely from 
 the eyes of the little one, and make him 
 aware, hideously enough, of what might 
 have been presented to him as a high and 
 holy thing. 
 
 A mother, living not far from New York 
 City, a woman of high ideals and infinite 
 tenderness, and devoted to her children with 
 a yearning, protecting love, sent her young 
 son to school with many prayers. He was 
 only eight years old, but there were no good 
 schools in the place where she lived, and 
 as she was a woman of wealth, one of the 
 best and most expensive boarding schools 
 in the city was selected for him. On the 
 evening of his return from his first term his 
 mother went to his bedside and heard him 
 say his prayers. At their conclusion she 
 whispered, fondly smoothing his hair: "Has 
 my boy done anything while he was away 
 that would have made mother sorry?" 
 
 "Yes, Mother," he said slowly, "but you 
 will have to put out the gas. I couldn't 
 tell you in the light." 
 
 Sick with a dreadful anticipation, the 
 mother put out the gas and took the boy's 
 hot hand. And into the ears of the mother.
 
 INNOCENCE VERSUS IGNORANCE 15 
 
 who would have given her life to keep her 
 child pure and clean, he poured a tale of 
 his first night in the dormitory at school; a 
 tale of doings so infinitely revolting that a 
 printed description would be impossible. 
 
 Investigation has shown that the school 
 in question did not supply, by any means, 
 a peculiar or isolated instance of evil-doing; 
 similar hideous enormities are, unfortunately, 
 but too well known to many of the boys of 
 our public and private schools. 
 
 Which would be more likely to pollute 
 his body at the suggestion of evil compan- 
 ions, the boy whose parents have sent him 
 from home without a word of warning, or 
 the boy whose father or mother had rever- 
 ently and wisely spoken to him of the high 
 and holy uses of his physical frame, taught 
 him that by his boyish purity he would 
 bring a blessing upon the little children 
 which God would one day entrust to him, 
 made him realize that chastity and clean 
 thought would bring him the only true 
 manliness? 
 
 The situation resolves itself into the ques- 
 tion: Shall my child learn of these things 
 from me, beautifully, and in a way that will 
 lead him to reverence himself and woman-
 
 l6 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 hood, or shall he learn of them evilly from 
 companions whose thoughts are impure and 
 unwholesome, and whose words will fasten 
 themselves upon his mind, the hideous im- 
 ages and coarse expletives never to be ob- 
 literated from his soul so long as he lives? 
 
 A woman who loses the opportunity to 
 bind her child to herself by relating to him 
 the wonderful story of his antenatal life 
 near to the mother-heart, has only herself 
 to thank when she misses the devotion that 
 might be hers. Better to tell the story a 
 year too soon than be a minute later than 
 the evil-thinking school-mate or the coarse- 
 minded servant. 
 
 The difficulty seems to hinge upon the 
 fact, previously referred to, that the parent 
 himself or herself, having no very exalted 
 idea of the sex-relation, instinctively real- 
 izes that it is impossible to present a truth 
 in a beautiful way that is not beautiful to 
 one's own perception. 
 
 This extraordinary attitude towards life 
 would be amusing were it not so common 
 and so disastrous in its consequences. It is 
 well nigh incomprehensible that a man or a 
 woman who believes in God can charac- 
 terize as impure the fundamental principle
 
 INNOCENCE VERSUS IGNORANCE Ij 
 
 upon which He planned the world, can ques- 
 tion the delicacy of the Almighty! Either 
 the relation of man and woman is beautiful 
 and holy, or it is indecent and unclean; if 
 it is the latter, it argues an indecent and 
 unclean mind on the part of its designer. 
 
 Hold Shopenhauer's theory of life, that 
 physical existence is a mistake, a fatal error, 
 that we came down into Matter through 
 our own wilful act, and that now that we 
 are here we must make the best of it, and 
 the position of the shame-faced prude is an 
 honest one. Then, every child conceived 
 is a repetition of the original sin, inasmuch 
 as it perpetuates material life; and, being 
 sin, is a thing to be blushed for. But to 
 the man who believes the existing oider of 
 things to be the result of Divine intention 
 or a part of Nature's great evolutionary 
 scheme, there is no such excuse. To him 
 all the existing physical laws must, logically, 
 be harmonious and lovely. Then there can 
 be, naturally, no such thing as shame in this 
 connection. 
 
 The physical body in a healthy state is 
 absolutely beautiful; beautiful in its appear- 
 ance and development, beautiful in its power 
 of endurance and its capacity for enjoyment,
 
 1 8 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 beautiful in the wondrous ability and deli- 
 cacy with which it interprets the thoughts 
 of the mind and the light of the soul. 
 
 If we are ashamed of aught connected 
 with our wonderful physical frames we are 
 so just in proportion as we fail to compre- 
 hend the mind of God. 
 
 The thrill that takes you, O maiden, when 
 the young man's hand touches yours, what 
 does it mean? Is it an evil thing? Then is 
 God evil. Is it a foolish thing? Then is God 
 not all-wisdom. It is the cloud in the sky 
 foretelling the shower that is to come when 
 the brown earth calls for it; it is the first 
 glint of dawning gold that reveals the sun. 
 The rain might devastate the earth, the sun 
 might blister and destroy all living things; 
 but the plan is not so. That yearning 
 sympathy for the woes of helpless things; 
 that tender desire to give and spare not, 
 that powerful emotion of yearning love for 
 the young, an emotion which you neither 
 analyze nor understand, is the eternal 
 craving for motherhood, the unexplained, 
 undefined hunger which distinguishes you 
 so clearly from the masculine creature to 
 whom you instinctively turn.
 
 INNOCENCE VERSUS IGNORANCE 19 
 
 That boyish attempt to protect your girl- 
 companion, the emotion that thrills through 
 you when she looks to you for help, the 
 new joy in the outside world that fills your 
 heart, O lad with the fresh down upon 
 your lip, what do these things mean ? They 
 are the assertion, the confirmation of the 
 exquisite law of sex, they are the indications 
 of virility, the promise of what may be a 
 glorious, noble manhood. 
 
 Is there shame in the rosy blossom that 
 receives into her heart where the hidden 
 seedlings lie the life-giving pollen? Is there 
 shame in the gorgeous plumage of the male 
 bird as he woos his mate with sweet devices ? 
 
 There is no secrecy or self-consciousness 
 in the nature-world about us. What ails us? 
 
 Without doubt, our mode of dressing is 
 responsible for a good deal of the false 
 modesty and prurient thought that have built 
 about our relations with one another un- 
 healthy and unnecessary social barriers. 
 
 If it were possible for us to stand face 
 to face as we are, not the productions of the 
 dressmaker, nor a clothes-horse on which is 
 hung the work of an unimaginative tailor, 
 nine-tenths of the sin and misery directly 
 traceable to, and which are the result of
 
 2O WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 vagaries of the sense imagination, would be 
 non-existent. Concealment engenders curi- 
 osity, and curiosity that has not its birth in 
 a spiritual or mental craving is an undesir- 
 able, useless and harmful thing, and an ex- 
 pression of an inherent weakness. 
 
 I would not for a moment be thought an 
 iconoclast, sweeping away illusions, betray- 
 ing phantasy into a rock-bound cave and 
 rolling to the door the stone of realism that 
 is to compass her death; on the contrary I 
 would draw into the high heaven of a spirit- 
 ual enjoyment all the sweetness and joy of 
 great romance and exquisite illusion. I 
 would let the fancy play among the snowy 
 hill-tops of a sane mentality, not leave it, 
 pinionless and mud-bespattered, to grope in 
 the darkness of the purely physical and 
 material. 
 
 Innocence and ignorance are not synony- 
 mous terms, although the average parent 
 thinks of them as such. One would find it 
 difficult to believe in the linguistic capacity 
 of a tongue-tied man; he might become a 
 second Demosthenes after a surgical opera- 
 tion, but one would hardly expect it. We 
 are not prepared to endorse the honesty of a 
 servant who has charge onl^ of a room with
 
 INNOCENCE VERSUS IGNORANCE 21 
 
 bare walls and empty cupboards. And we 
 refuse to accept an innocence which is 
 ignorant. 
 
 To have found the haunt of the snake 
 and to stand erect with the foot upon it; 
 to comprehend the arguments of the atheist 
 and to say: "I believe''; this is innocence. 
 To stand with level brows gazing out upon 
 the world, to comprehend its sure pain 
 and as sure joy, to look with unruffled yet 
 sympathetic soul upon sin and sorrow, 
 this is the only true innocence. 
 
 If a boy suffers through lack of timely 
 instructions as to the needs and temptations 
 of his body, the girl runs still greater risks. 
 Upon her rests the inalienable responsibility 
 of motherhood; her life should be shaped, 
 her thoughts held in check, her physical 
 needs supplied, her soul developed in the 
 light of this one great fact. 
 
 It has been urged that you cannot inspire 
 a child with a regard for the welfare of 
 future generations; this is not so. A child 
 appealed to in the right way, enters into the 
 thought with a beautiful interest, and will, 
 of its own accord, further any attempt on 
 your part so to shape its life, so to modify 
 tendencies and build up character that the
 
 22 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 little soul some day to be entrusted to its 
 keeping may be the wiser, the nobler, the 
 more beautiful. 
 
 Suppose we were to speak to a child in 
 this way: 
 
 "Little one, some day you may, perhaps, 
 have a child of your own, part of yourself 
 as you are a part of me; would you like 
 that little child of yours to be great and 
 good and beautiful, or to have a bad temper, 
 an ugly look, or an impatient or selfish 
 nature? You would like it to be perfect? 
 I thought so. Well, you can make it so if 
 you like, and you can help noiv. How wide 
 you open your eyes! And yet you look 
 like me, do you not? And I notice in you 
 the same little ways that I used to have 
 when I was your age. And you have faults 
 to fight against now because I did not pay 
 any attention to them when I was a child. 
 Whatever kind of nature you make in your- 
 self will determine the nature of your child; 
 and so if you correct your faults, and try 
 to be brave, and persevering, and patient, 
 and pure, you are helping to make good and 
 beautiful the little soul that will some day 
 be entrusted to you."* 
 
 *Se booklets of Dr. Mary Wood-Allen, Ann Arbor, Mich.
 
 INNOCENCE VERSUS IGNORANCE 23 
 
 Such a talk, given lovingly and with ten- 
 der emphasis and repeated in varying phra- 
 ses from time to time to keep the thought 
 green and vital, will have a more decided 
 and definite effect on the child-life than all 
 the threats of Hell and promises of Heaven 
 which were considered a necessary part of 
 the education of our own childhood. 
 
 Looking solely at the physical side of 
 boy and girl life, it would seem that ordin- 
 ary common-sense would suggest the wis- 
 dom of instruction and the dangers of igno- 
 rance. 
 
 Many a boy has made shipwreck of his 
 physical and moral life for want of a few 
 fatherly words, earnestly and forcibly spoken, 
 ere the period of adolescence, with its 
 uncomprehended desires and strange new 
 thoughts, swept over the youthful soul. 
 
 Incredible as it may seem, there are many 
 mothers who, through carelessness, or more 
 probably from an extraordinary and unjusti- 
 fiable reserve and shamefacedness, allow a 
 girl to pass into womanhood without a word 
 as to the significance of the epoch, without 
 a thought as to the needs of the young 
 mind, without a word of the motherly sym- 
 pathy and comprehension which, knowingly 
 or not, the child craves.
 
 24 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 A reputable woman physician practising 
 in New York City made the following 
 statement to the writer: "In view of the 
 prevalence of solitary vice, and the atmos- 
 phere of sexual unrest surrounding our 
 young people; in view, also of the numerous 
 preventives to conception that are known 
 today; it is held by many physicians in this 
 city and elsewhere that it would be wise, 
 in the interests of the physical health of the 
 race, to allow the same freedom in sexual 
 matters to girls as is now accorded to 
 young men." 
 
 This statement needs no comment; that 
 such a state of things could be seriously 
 contemplated by thinking medical specialists, 
 materialists though they may be, and lacking 
 in sensibility and moral perception, will open 
 the eyes of the guardians of the holiness of 
 young men and women. 
 
 We must deprecate most seriously the 
 blindness of parents who, apparently failing 
 to appreciate the dangers that surround their 
 daughters, themselves lead them into temp- 
 tation by allowing them an unwise and un- 
 due freedom. 
 
 To allow a girl, utterly untaught by 
 parents in sexual matters, to come and
 
 INNOCENCE VERSUS IGNORANCE 25 
 
 go as she pleases, to walk and talk with 
 whom she may choose, and at what hours 
 she may prefer, is voluntarily to expose 
 her to the most obvious and inevitable temp- 
 tation. Better an over-careful, over-particu- 
 lar, over-watchful mother, than the practical 
 and unwise knowledge of sexual intimacies 
 that shows itself in the private rooms of 
 our lying-in hospitals. 
 
 In one instance, of many known to the 
 writer, the petted darling of a luxurious 
 home occupied a room at a private hospital 
 for four months while her father and broth- 
 ers supposed her at school. The mother 
 who had seen too late the fruit of the "liberty" 
 so proudly spoken of by many American 
 parents, sternly refused to allow the girl to 
 see her child. It was hurried away as soon as 
 born, and the little sixteen-year-old mother, 
 whose piteous appeals to be allowed to see 
 her baby were austerely refused, could only 
 lie and ponder over the mystery and appar- 
 ent injustice of things. Indulgently reared 
 in a luxurious home, with no guide for her 
 conduct but her own desires and the false 
 principles of a society whose condemnation 
 rests only upon those who are "found out;" 
 what restraining influence had she had in 
 the moment of temptation?
 
 26 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 "Her own proper instincts should have 
 taught her to behave rightly," some one 
 says. The argument is a poor one. If it is 
 solely a question of instinct, the sex-instinct 
 implanted by nature would throw the bal- 
 ance entirely in the opposite direction. What 
 chance would what our critic designates as 
 "proper instincts" (and which are, after all 
 but the inherited and imbibed principles of 
 an accepted social law and order) stand 
 against the mighty impulse of sex when 
 affection and opportunity called it forth? 
 
 If parents refuse requisite instruction to 
 their young people, they owe it to them to 
 take away the opportunity for wrong doing. 
 
 I do not for a moment wish to suggest 
 that the purity of our young people is de- 
 pendent upon parental restraint. I simply 
 wish to point out to mothers that to allow 
 absolute freedom of intercourse between 
 two susceptible young people, in evening 
 hours, or on long drives, when the blood 
 is hot and the senses are stimulated, is to 
 expose them to inevitable sexual temptation. 
 
 In this connection it may be well to re- 
 peat a remark made to the writer by one of 
 the most noted and respected of our special- 
 ists in nervous diseases. "In my experience,"
 
 INNOCENCE VERSUS IGNORANCE 2 1 ] 
 
 he said, "I have known more moral slips 
 resulting from young people going to even- 
 ing church together than from going to a 
 dance together." 
 
 This will sound like an astounding state- 
 ment to those who have not studied the 
 intimate connection of the sexual and the 
 religious natures. It is, nevertheless, true 
 both in reason and in fact. 
 
 Many of our girls' boarding schools are 
 hot-beds of sensuality. In one of these, 
 known to the writer, an expensive and fash- 
 ionable seminary, the moral conditions were 
 such that a girl who had no tale of a personal 
 sexual experience to relate to her compan- 
 ions was considered not at all "up to date." 
 These experienced young ladies were, of 
 course, too wise to risk the chance of ex- 
 posure, were a good deal wiser, in fact, than 
 their fond and indulgent mammas, whohad 
 been too afraid of soiling their sweet daugh- 
 ters' minds to inculcate in them habits of 
 virtuous thought and living. 
 
 In one of our educational towns, which 
 shall, of necessity, be nameless, immoral 
 friendships, though concealed from outsiders, 
 were almost universal; there was scarcely 
 a lad in the bovs' school who had not had
 
 28 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 criminal intercourse with some girl in the 
 female seminary. And these young people 
 represented the best, socially speaking, of 
 our nation; were the prospective fathers 
 and mothers of the cream of our coming 
 civilization, in the eyes of the world! 
 
 These facts are presented not through a 
 desire to shock, nor with any idea of whole- 
 sale condemnation of our young people. 
 There are too many pure young girls and 
 right-thinking and right-acting young men 
 in our land to allow of a sweeping statement 
 of youthful degeneracy. Yet it is necessary 
 that the fathers and mothers of the rising 
 generation should realize to the full their 
 responsibilities in this regard; should know 
 the possibilities of educational error, the 
 danger of unguarded youth, and the power 
 they wield for good or ill over the young 
 lives entrusted to their care. 
 
 Espionage and restraint are contrary to 
 our democratic ideas; it is offensive to the 
 pride of the American mother to treat her 
 daughter as European girls are treated. 
 
 There is an alternative, as I have very 
 definitely set forth; frank, full, wise and 
 satisfying instruction in sex matters. 
 
 In this way alone can we expect to find
 
 INNOCENCE VERSUS IGNORANCE 29 
 
 safety for our children in the days of storm 
 and stress; and, failing in our duty in this 
 regard, we have, whether we realize it or 
 not, been false to a trust, been coward senti- 
 nels at the post, unworthy of the most ob- 
 vious of obligations, and faithless to the 
 cause of the trusting and the helpless.
 
 FLOWER BABIES 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 T is not difficult to imagine 
 a parent or teacher who is 
 willing to accept as,essential 
 and reasonable the fact that 
 ignorance is danger; to con- 
 cede that the only real inno- 
 cence is that of a Christ who knew all of 
 evil yet without contamination; yet who, 
 through a lack of the requisite knowledge, 
 or a barrenness of ideas, finds it difficult 
 to give the necessary information in a wise 
 and suitable way. And yet for the parent, 
 surely the task is an easy one. The chief 
 necessity is that the mother (I use the word 
 mother advisedly, though the story can be 
 quite as beautifully and wisely told by the 
 father) should herself look at the matter 
 with a high and beautiful reverence. Any 
 slurring over a difficulty, any hesitation or 
 doubt in the mind of the narrator, will inevi- 
 ably affect the mind of the child. Simply, 
 delicately, tenderly, the tale should be told, 
 with the child's hands clasped in her own,
 
 FLOWER BABEIS 3! 
 
 an honest, loving purpose reflected in the 
 childish soul in tender, pure responsive 
 affection and trust. 
 
 It would be difficult to improve upon 
 Doctor Mary Wood- Allen's sweet story. I 
 have yet to meet the person, young or old, 
 who can hear its conclusion unmoved. 
 
 "Would you like to hear the story of Mr. 
 and Mrs. Morning-Glory and their children? 
 This flower is their home, and here we 
 shall find them all. These pink, or blue, 
 or purple leaves, form their house, and we 
 call it the corolla. We can pull the corolla 
 away and leave a little cup of green leaves, 
 known as the calyx. We now hold in our 
 hands the corolla, like a bright-colored vase. 
 If we tear it apart we find growing fast to 
 it at the bottom five slender stems which 
 are called stamens and each part of the 
 stamen has a different name. The stalk is 
 the filament, or thread; the enlarged part at 
 the top is the anther, and this is hollow and 
 filled with a fine powder called pollen. 
 When you have smelled a lily and found 
 your nose all yellow, you have only carried 
 away on your nose the pollen of the lily, and 
 this pollen is very important, as I shall show 
 you. Now let us look at the green cup or
 
 32 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 calyx. We find rising out of the center of 
 it a slender stem, called the pistil, composed 
 of three parts. The stem itself is called the 
 style, the upper end of the stem, rough, and 
 not covered with a skin like the rest, is called 
 the stigma, and the enlarged part at the 
 bottom of the pistil is known as the ovary. 
 Ovary is a word from the Latin and means 
 "egg-bed." 
 
 "Do plants have eggs?" 
 
 "Oh, yes, only we call the eggs of plants 
 seeds. In this ovary are the seeds of new 
 plants, and so we can call them baby Morning 
 Glories. When everything is ready for the 
 creation of the new plant, the anther at the 
 top of the stamen opens, the pollen dust falls 
 on the stigma, passes down through the style 
 into the ovary, and, as we say fertilizes the 
 seeds or ovules (little eggs,) and they begin 
 to grow, but they would never grow and 
 become new plants if they were not fertil- 
 ized. If we soak a dry, fertilized seed for a 
 few hours, and then cut it open carefully, 
 we shall find in it the little baby plant tucked 
 away in its little shell, and around it we find 
 the jelly-like matter which is its food while 
 it remains inside the shell. When the dry 
 seed is put into the ground it finds water
 
 FLOWER BABEIS 33 
 
 there, drinks it up and then swells, and the 
 baby plant, waking up, stretches itself up 
 towards the light and air. This is how baby 
 plants are made and begin to grow. We 
 saw that it was needful, in order to produce 
 the new plants, that the pollen from the an- 
 ther should unite with the ovules in the ovary. 
 The stamen, with its various parts, we may 
 call the father of the plant, and the pistil 
 the mother, and the ovary is the little bed 
 or cradle in which the babies sleep. Every- 
 thing that grows must have a father and a 
 mother. Sometimes, as in the Morning 
 Glory, the father and the mother live in the 
 same plant or tree, sometimes the mother- 
 flowers are on one plant and the father- 
 flowers on another plant. But as the baby 
 plants will not grow unless the pollen from 
 the male plant has been carried to the stigma 
 of the female plant, we find that bees and 
 insects and winds are messengers to carry 
 the pollen dust to the female flowers. Is it 
 not a beautiful thought that the baby plant 
 has a father and a mother, a home and a 
 little cradle?" 
 
 The child listens to this simple story as 
 to a fairy tale, and the mother who has the 
 knowledge of botany to continue this in-
 
 34 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 struction will give her little one much that 
 is beautiful to think of, and prepare him for 
 many happy hours among the delights of 
 Nature's wealth of beauty in the flower- 
 world. 
 
 But now the lesson must be carried from 
 plants into the world of animals. I will 
 only suggest the story of fishes, frogs and 
 serpents which can be made of absorbing 
 interest, and proceed to the winged crea- 
 tures. We find that baby animals have 
 fathers and mothers. The father-bird and 
 the mother-bird work together to build the 
 nest home for their baby-birds. When the 
 nest is built the mother-bird lays the eggs, 
 which in fact are the seeds of new birds. 
 The mother-bird has in her body an ovary 
 or egg-bed in which the eggs are produced. 
 But no birds would come from the eggs if 
 they were not first fertilized by a product 
 from the father-bird. This is not a dust or 
 powder, as in plants, but a fluid, and it must 
 enter into the body of the mother-bird and 
 fertilize the eggs or they will not "hatch," 
 as we say. 
 
 The seeds of plants are buried in the 
 ground to be kept warm and moist until they 
 grow. The eggs of the bird are covered
 
 FLOWER BABIES 35 
 
 with a hard shell, and the mother-bird sits 
 upon them and keeps them warm until they 
 grow strong enough to break the shell and 
 come into the world. 
 
 "All life is from the egg," says the Latin. 
 Plants have eggs in ovaries, and birds have 
 eggs in ovaries, and we begin to wonder if 
 human babies do not come from eggs. Yes, 
 they do, but not from eggs with hard shells 
 as the seeds of plants or the eggs of birds. 
 
 The egg from which comes the human 
 baby is so small that it cannot be seen by 
 the naked eye. If it came into the world 
 it would be lost. It is too precious to run 
 any such chance, and so the Lord has made 
 a little room or nest in the mother's body 
 where the egg is kept warm and fed until 
 it grows large enough to live its own inde- 
 pendent life in the world. The mother knows 
 that her little baby is there. She knows that 
 she breathes for it, that it is fed by her 
 blood, and so she thinks of it and loves it 
 and prays for it. She makes its beautiful 
 little garments, and dreams of how happy 
 she will be when she can see its baby face, 
 and feel the touch of its tiny hands. And 
 so it is her baby almost a year before it 
 belongs to any one else, and she waits for
 
 36 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 its coming with hope and fear. And when 
 the time has come the door of this little 
 room opens, sometimes with great pain and 
 suffering to the mother, and the child comes 
 into the world and is laid in her arms. And 
 still it is her baby more than any one else's, 
 for it depends on her for food, drawing its 
 milk from her breast; she cares for it by 
 night and day, in health and sickness, and 
 forgets all that she has suffered because of 
 the love she has for this little one who is 
 really a part of herself. 
 
 Do you think a child will hear this story 
 from the lips of a mother and not be touched? 
 I have yet to hear of the child who was not 
 deeply impressed by it. One little girl who 
 had listened with exceeding interest, said 
 when her mother had ended: "Did you go 
 through this for me Mamma? I thought I 
 loved you before, but now I know I never 
 did, but I do love you now, Mamma, and 
 I can never, never be a naughty girl again." 
 
 "Mamma, how big was I when I was 
 made ?" asked a little boy. It would have 
 been easy in reply to have indicated the 
 size of the new-born child, but this mother 
 was too wise and far-seeing; she saw in this 
 question her opportunity. Taking the child 
 upon her knee, she said:
 
 FLOWER BABIES 37 
 
 "When you were made, my dear, you 
 were but a tiny speck, not so big as the 
 point of a needle. You could not have been 
 seen except with a microscope." 
 
 "Why, mamma, if I was as small as that 
 I should think I would have been lost." 
 
 "So you would, dear child, if the kind 
 Heavenly Father had not taken especial 
 care of you. He knew how precious little 
 babies are, and so he has made a little room 
 in the mother's body, where they can be 
 kept from all harm until they are big enough 
 to live their own separate lives." 
 
 "And did I live in such a little room 
 in you?" 
 
 "Yes, dear.'' 
 
 "But how did I eat and breathe?" 
 
 "I ate and breathed for you." 
 
 "Did you know I was there?" 
 
 "Yes. Sometimes your little hand or foot 
 would knock on the wall of the room, and 
 I would feel it and would say: My darling 
 speaks to me and says, 'Mother, I am here ;' 
 and then I would say: Good morning, little 
 one, mother loves you; and then I would 
 try to think how you would look when I 
 should see you." 
 
 "How long was I there, mamma?"
 
 38 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 "Three-quarters of a year, and you grew 
 every day, and, because I wanted you to be 
 happy, I tried to be happy all the time, and 
 I was careful to eat good food so that you 
 might be strong, and I tried to be gentle, 
 kind, patient, persevering; in fact, everything 
 that I wanted you to be, for I knew that 
 everything I did would help to make you 
 what you were to be." 
 
 "But, mamma, how did what you ate feed 
 me?" 
 
 "My food was made into blood, and the 
 blood was carried to you and nourished you." 
 
 "But how?" 
 
 "Did you ever see mamma make a dump- 
 ling?" 
 
 "Yes. You took the dough and put the 
 apple in and gathered the dough all up in 
 one place and pinched it together." 
 
 "Yes, and you are much like the dump- 
 ling. Your skin is folded around you like 
 the dough around the apple and is gathered 
 together in one place on the front of the 
 body. We call it the navel, or umbilicus. 
 Before you were born the skin at this point 
 was continued in a long cord which was 
 connected with mamma, and through it the 
 blood was carried to you. When the time
 
 FLOWER BABIES 39 
 
 came for you to go out into the world, to 
 live apart from me, the door of your little 
 room opened with much pain and suffering 
 to me, and then you came into the world, 
 or were born, as we say. Then the cord, 
 or tube, that connected you to me was cut, 
 and, healing up, formed the navel, or the 
 place where the skin of the whole body is 
 gathered together. When you drew your 
 first breath into your lungs, you cried, and 
 then I knew you were alive, and I laughed, 
 and said: "Is it a boy or girl?" After you 
 were washed and dressed they brought you 
 to me and laid you on my arm and for the 
 first time I saw the face of the little baby 
 I had loved so long. And now you can un- 
 derstand why you are so dear to me." 
 
 "O, mamma, now I know why I love 
 you the best of all the world," exclaimed 
 the child, with warm embraces and with 
 loving tears in his eyes. Was that not better 
 than to have told him an untruth or even 
 a half-truth, or to have left him to learn 
 concerning himself from the impure,thought- 
 less, or lying lips of some chance comrade 
 or acquaintance ?" 
 
 There is no need to be deterred by the 
 fear that the child will talk to others of
 
 40 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 what you have told him. We realize to 
 our cost that it is possible for a child to 
 keep a secret from mother; give him a 
 chance to keep a secret with mother. A 
 child will understand from the merest sug- 
 gestion that the same unwritten law of 
 delicacy that prevents people of refinement 
 from speaking of the operation of their phy- 
 sical organs except in private and to a near 
 relation would obtain with regard to these 
 other organs whose use he is only now learn- 
 ing. Frequent reference to the subject, need- 
 less to say, is unnecessary. The average 
 healthy, out-of-door child will learn his les- 
 sons, and play heartily, with that delight in 
 the present that is the joy and beauty of 
 childhood, without troubling thoughts or cu- 
 rious wonderings. Only we must be ready 
 for the questions when they come, and be 
 very careful that no one else gets before- 
 hand with us. 
 
 As far as bodily temptations are concerned, 
 there is little fear for the frank, healthy, play- 
 loving youngster, or the daring, romping, 
 impetuous hoyden; unless ideas of evil are 
 communicated by unwholesome companions 
 they are very unlikely to suggest themselves; 
 and, in many cases, if suggested by others.
 
 FLOWER BABIES 4! 
 
 will be repelled in a vigorous spirit of dis- 
 gust. But with the reserved, self-contained 
 child, with the child who dreams instead of 
 playing, who prefers to be alone rather than 
 seek the society of his or her fellows, who 
 is morbid and sensitive; such a child needs 
 most careful supervision, most wise and 
 tender teaching. 
 
 Novels and light literature are to the men- 
 tal and moral nature as pound-cake and 
 pickles to the digestive apparatus; a robust, 
 vigorous, staunch constitution may swallow 
 the useless and harmful preparations with- 
 out apparent ill effects; but to a delicate and 
 sensitive organism such things are poison. 
 Experimenting in these matters is perilous; 
 there is too much at stake. Few persons un- 
 der eighteen years of age can with safety be 
 given the unhealthy and unreal' romance that 
 constitutes much of the light literature of to- 
 day; it engenders false notions of life and 
 loose ideas of morality and causes a prema- 
 ture and unhealthy perception of sex-relations 
 and sex-emotions. Even if this were not so 
 there still remains the undoubted fact that 
 the reading of novels destroys a child's taste 
 for what is better; that, at a time when he 
 might be storing and enriching his mind
 
 42 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 with history, travel and biography, imbibing 
 the world's best thought and enjoying it, he 
 is losing his intellectual grip and vitiating 
 his mental powers in the consumption of the 
 colored candy and lard-compounded pastry 
 of literature. Let the young people have 
 the open air, the boyish and girlish fun and 
 frolic, and when they want a book let them 
 read something that is worth while. At any 
 time, but especially during the adolescent 
 period, they should be encouraged in any 
 pastime that keeps them out of doors; col- 
 lections of shells and minerals, the accumu- 
 lation of botanical specimens, collections of 
 butterflies, and bees, made in a humane man- 
 ner. Never mind if the house is littered 
 with things intrinsically valueless; a little 
 dust and disorder is well paid for in the 
 moral health of the children. 
 
 The writer was visited once by a mother 
 who was in great distress and desired help. 
 She had discovered that her boy of sixteen, 
 the eldest of four children, had become ad- 
 dicted to solitary vice; inexpressibly shocked 
 and utterly helpless, as she felt herself, she 
 craved knowledge in dealing with this the 
 most serious problem of her life. 
 
 The poor little woman said with tears in 
 her eves:
 
 FLOWER BABIES 
 
 "If he hadn't been such a good boy it 
 would be different. But he has always been 
 so quiet and so gentle, not rough and boist- 
 erous like some boys; would just sit down 
 quietly at home with a book; such a dear, 
 stay-at-home fellow." 
 
 I told her that a temperment such as this 
 is the more liable to this form of temptation, 
 and proceeded to question her carefully as 
 to his method of life. 
 
 T found that she had fed him from baby- 
 hood on a large quantity of meat and eggs, 
 and that he craved and was given condi- 
 ments of all sorts. 
 
 Questioned as to the boy's exercise she 
 admitted that he seldom played out-door 
 games, or went to the school gymnasium. 
 
 When the recital of conditions was ended 
 and I was in full possession of the facts, 
 I said to her: 
 
 "The boy is not to blame; you and you 
 alone must bear the reproach; if you had 
 desired to foster in your boy the very sin 
 over which you are now breaking your heart 
 you could not possibly have done so more 
 effectively than by the training that you have 
 given him. To feed your boy with meats, 
 sauces and pickles, to encourage a sedentary
 
 44 WOMAN AND THE RACK 
 
 life instead of sending him to knock about 
 in the open air; to allow him the light read- 
 ing of which you tell me; and at the same 
 time to give him no word of instruction or 
 warning as to the uses of his body, these 
 combined have created the condition that you 
 deplore, and diligently fostered its growth." 
 The poor mother reproached herself bitterly, 
 and yet, how many mothers are wiser to- 
 day? How long shall the farcical situation 
 last, that of mothers whose minds are too 
 over-nice to inform themselves upon matters 
 that mean life and death to their children? 
 How long shall we watch our insane asy- 
 lums rill with victims of a disease that is 
 abhorrent and unnecessary, because parents 
 shrink from or ignore their obvious duty? 
 For the benefit of those who may read 
 these pages with all a true mother's anxiety 
 to know and do the best, I give in the matter 
 of diet the unqualified opinion of a physical 
 educator who has made this condition a study 
 for sixteen years. She says: "Beef-eating 
 in children undeniably fosters this evil. 
 Meat is not necessary to children's health 
 and in any but very small quantities is pos- 
 itively injurious; but beef is especially 
 harmful ; no mother who cares for the purity
 
 FLOWER BABIES 45 
 
 of her child will feed it upon beef if she 
 knows and understands the possible results. 
 That the eating of flesh is essential to a 
 child's health is a popular superstition and 
 has no foundation in fact; but if you must 
 give him meat, let it be in the smallest quan- 
 tities; chicken preferably, 'and no beef." 
 This writer has facts of a large experience 
 and authority from able sources upon which 
 to base her assumption; there is no place 
 for such within the limits of this volume; 
 I give her earnest statement for what it 
 may be worth to my readers. 
 
 It will, perhaps, be interesting to learn the 
 result of earnest effort in this particular case. 
 Although a habit of perhaps two years' stand- 
 ing it had not been so frequently indulged 
 in as to constitute disease.. By altering en- 
 tirely the boy's mode of life, by giving him 
 healthy out-door interests, by a radical change 
 in his diet, and by earnest and tender teach- 
 ing the boy was able to conquer the degrad- 
 ing habit. When the grand use of the sexual 
 function was rightly explained to the boy, 
 when his manliness and strength of will 
 were appealed to, when he understood that 
 physical disaster and mental derangement 
 were the inevitable outcome of the indul-
 
 46 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 gence of this fatal habit, he shrank from it 
 with horror. 
 
 Not that the victory was an easy matter; 
 for many weeks it was his mother's custom 
 to read him to sleep with a tale interesting 
 enough to keep his mind from wandering 
 and yet not exciting enough to keep him from 
 sleep; and he found her ever ready to help 
 him when he most needed assistance. Be- 
 tween them was established a beautiful and 
 understanding sympathy, a friendship that 
 nothing could destroy. The boy's health im- 
 proved, his school reports showed a marked 
 advancement consequent upon his cleared 
 intelligence; his eye met that of his parents 
 and friends frankly and directly; the lad was 
 saved. 
 
 The temptation of the shocked parent, in 
 a case of this kind, is to be harsh and con- 
 temptuous; such an attitude is both foolish 
 and wrong; if causes are studied, the fault 
 will usually, as in this case, prove to be the 
 fault of environment and of the ignorance 
 of his natural protectors. It is thought by 
 many that a tendency to this evil is sown in 
 the unborn child by the sexual indulgence 
 of his parents during his intra-uterine life. 
 Be this as it may, the parent will need to
 
 FLOWER BABIES 47 
 
 be very confident of his or her own sexual 
 temperance before he fixes the blame for 
 his son's abnormalty. 
 
 We take it for granted that savage play and 
 rude expressions are not suitable for girls; 
 I cannot see that they are either right or 
 profitable for boys. The elimination of the 
 whip as a toy, the replacing of the gun or 
 bow and arrow by the carpenter's box or 
 garden tools would be a prudent revolution; 
 to make not to destroy ', beneficence and hu- 
 manity instead of selfish pleasure in the 
 taking of life; this is surely the principle 
 to work upon. In the matter of sex these 
 questions play an important part; tenderness 
 toward all living things, gentleness in deal- 
 ing with the weaker, courtesy in speech, 
 these precepts inculcated in the young lay 
 the foundation for considerateness and unsel- 
 fishness in the marriage relation, and for a 
 chivalrous feeling of protective care for all 
 members of the opposite sex. 
 
 Our present chief Executive, while Gov- 
 ernor of New York State, in speaking to 
 the N. Y. State Assembly of Mothers in 
 Session in the Assembly Chamber of the 
 Capitol at Albany said that he would not 
 give a fig for a boy who would not fight.
 
 48 WOMAN AND THB RACE 
 
 This seemed a somewhat startling statement 
 to many of his hearers, women who had, 
 perhaps, found some difficulty in restraining 
 the too belligerent tendencies of their off- 
 spring. 
 
 At the conclusion of the Governor's ad- 
 dress I asked him for a more definite ex- 
 planation of his remark than he had given. 
 He said: "If I saw one of my boys ill-treat- 
 ing an animal, or hurting or allowing to be 
 hurt a child smaller than himself I would 
 thrash him within an inch of his life!" 
 
 The principle underlying the utterance 
 of this man for whom friends and enemies 
 alike have respect, and of whose manliness 
 and integrity there has never been any ques- 
 tion, is easily seen; fighting for fighting's 
 sake, or for the despoiling of the enemy, is 
 not Mr. Roosevelt's idea of courage; the 
 protection of the weaker, the defence of 
 honor, the fighting to the death for a prin- 
 ciple; these would seem to be the motive 
 and mainspring of that "strenuous" life and 
 mode of thinking that has become a house- 
 hold word since Theodore Roosevelt un- 
 dertook the grave responsibility of a share 
 in the government of his country. 
 
 The question as to the moral and religious
 
 FLOWER BABIES 49 
 
 aspect of war is not within our present scope 
 or idea; on general principles, however, we 
 may take it for granted that the school will 
 supply enough national feeling; in the home 
 we may with advantage cultivate interna- 
 tional sympathies. The brotherhood, not 
 only of the race but of the world, the in- 
 terdependence of nations, the general prin- 
 ciples of a wide humanitarianism, these will 
 be of great and wide importance in the bal- 
 ancing of the emotions and the broadening 
 of the character. 
 
 In past days anything was considered good 
 enough for children; any one, however ig- 
 norant, was deemed fit to start the young 
 idea on the path which it should travel. We 
 are wiser today; we realize that if the world 
 is to be improved the reformation can only 
 come through the babies in our arms : that 
 the early years of a child's life are the most 
 important, and need for a gracious harvest 
 of goodness the wisest of sowing and the 
 tenderest of cultivating; that the health and 
 wealth of our nation and our world lies 
 with the pliable, teachable natures of the 
 children of today.
 
 WOMAN'S PLACE IN THE 
 SOCIAL SCHEME 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 I am no saint niched in a hallowed wall 
 For men to worship ; but I would compel 
 A level gaze ; you teachers who would tell 
 
 A woman's place, I do defy you all ! 
 
 While justice lives and love with joy is crowned 
 Woman and man must meet on equal ground. 
 
 FALSE idea, held for ages, 
 tenaciously gripped by the 
 stronger portion of humanity, 
 tacitly allowed by the weaker, 
 is a thing of might ; let an 
 attempt be made to do away 
 with it and it will seem to bear a strong 
 resemblance to an effort to uproot by main 
 force a hundred-year-old oak or yew. Some- 
 times it seems to yield; surely the powerful 
 pressure must tell; but the roots are firm in 
 the ground, and the fibrils are tenacious. 
 Long, strong, and untiring must be the en- 
 ergy that forces it from its resting-place. 
 In times of old, woman was a valuable 
 piece of property, a necessary adjunct to a
 
 WOMAN'S PLACE IN THE SOCIAL SCHEME 5 1 
 
 home, a creature who was not supposed to 
 have either mind or will. She was bargained 
 for by the man who desired her, and he made 
 as good a negotiation with the father or near- 
 est relative as his wits allowed. To have 
 educated a woman would have been the 
 height of folly. To what end? Even sup- 
 posing that the brain were capable of being 
 trained, which was a matter for serious doubt, 
 what would be the advantage of book-knowl- 
 edge to the household drudge? Her task 
 was to bear children to her lord and master, 
 to see to their bodily wants while they were 
 young, to prepare food for the family, to 
 see that the home was kept in order. And, 
 born to this position in society, and knowing 
 no alternative, a submissive spirit was logi- 
 cal and appropriate. 
 
 As years passed, and civilization and com- 
 mon sense aided by a few women who had 
 the hardihood to assert themselves, proved 
 the fallacy of the old-time tenets, man began 
 to look for the helpmeet for him that nature 
 had designed. As prisoners, newly liberated, 
 look about helplessly ere the strangeness of 
 release has worn off, so woman, long accus- 
 tomed to tutelage and coercion, wakened into 
 a dawn of possibilities with dulled senses.
 
 52 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 Not that the daylight had burst unher- 
 alded; the dawn had long been imminent 
 to the seeing eye, the night shadows had 
 rolled lingeringly away, and the first prom- 
 ise of morning clearly anticipated the future 
 shining. 
 
 But the sense of feudalism is hard to kill, 
 and the earthbound spirit is not quick to 
 perceive. 
 
 Even now, when woman, being given the 
 opportunity and the advantages, has proved 
 herself on a level with her brother in mental 
 power and endowments, she is still the ex- 
 ceptional woman. The great majority of 
 womankind still, like Lot's wife, turns its 
 back upon the waiting Zoar. 
 
 The spirit of bygone ages is strong with- 
 in the average woman, at the dawn of this 
 new century; and the shackles of old igno- 
 rance still furnish excuse for the refusal of 
 the burden of a personal, mental aristocracy. 
 
 A situation cannot successfully be forced; 
 a position is not a thing to be made; it is 
 something to which we shape ourselves, or 
 for which we are intended. 
 
 We fit ourselves for a certain post, and 
 lo! we are in possession. We are great 
 enough to speak to the world and the world
 
 WOMAN'S PLACE IN THE SOCIAL SCHEME 53 
 
 stops to listen; if we are not satisfied with 
 our condition or our possessions we have 
 no one to blame but ourselves. The bold 
 man catches the good that offers, the tim- 
 orous man lets it slip by. The ruler steps 
 upon his throne with authority, the servile 
 soul knows but to beg. Each is in his own 
 place, and the future will be of his own 
 making. 
 
 When woman is able and ready to govern 
 the country, the privilege of the ballot will 
 not be generously and condescendingly ac- 
 corded her, it will be hers by inherent neces- 
 sity, inevitably, by the working of a natural 
 law. If woman is dependent, it is because 
 she has thought dependency, because she 
 has not cared to reason, because she has not 
 fully appreciated her intuitive powers. Could 
 the women of America but rise up in their 
 strength they might do as they listed, but 
 the strength is as yet undeveloped. It is like 
 a battle in which all but the front ranks of 
 the advancing army are recruited from ithe 
 alms-house and the asylum; the leaders are 
 doing nobly, but the body of the force is a 
 drag and an impediment, and under existing 
 circumstances success is impossible. Let a 
 woman educate herself, develop herself,
 
 54 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 rise in daily thought from the pettiness and 
 frivolity with which she has been contented, 
 into the largeness of national and interna- 
 tional interests; let her train herself to be 
 guided by the mind, not by emotional im- 
 pulse, and she will have but to ask; nay, the 
 things that she now craves will be thrust 
 upon her, 
 
 The illiterate foreigner who after a brief 
 sojourn in the country has suffrage rights, 
 a veritable thorn-in-the-flesh to women of 
 mind and sense, has in reality no voice in 
 national or civic affairs; in casting his vote 
 he has no more idea of duty or of the coun- 
 try's needs than a child; he sells his vote 
 as a matter of course; and, without regard 
 to the moral aspect of the question, it is 
 about the wisest thing he could do. 
 
 When woman sets herself earnestly and 
 whole-heartedly to care for the good of her 
 country, for its moral status and its legisla- 
 tive purity, then and not until then shall we 
 have her vote to aid the cause of justice, 
 her voice to champion the right. 
 
 It may be claimed that such conscien- 
 cious knowledge and such noble intention 
 as this is not universal today in our men 
 voters. This is undoubtedly true, and is to
 
 WOMAN'S PLACE IN THE SOCIAL SCHEME 55 
 
 be deplored. The fact, however, in itself, 
 would hardly justify the extension of the 
 franchise. 
 
 To be great for the sake of womanhood 
 and through womanhood, to be great be- 
 cause only a great woman can give to the 
 world great sons, to be great because of the 
 recognition of the inherent godliness of the 
 individual this is the true ambition of wom- 
 an. Not, necessarily, to rule; the responsi- 
 bility of sovereignty is a rare obligation, 
 and the few on whom it rightly rests should 
 be the wise of the earth. 
 
 To make of herself the fullest expression 
 of an inherent potentiality, to reach in phys- 
 ical, mental, moral and spiritual life the 
 highest possible point of development, is 
 but to fulfil the most obvious and peremp- 
 tory of natural obligations. The average 
 woman does not see this, however; she either 
 conceives her duty to be epitomized from 
 all the regulations of the decalogue into the 
 one word "self-sacrifice," or, feeling no ac- 
 countability to either herself or God, she 
 regards life simply as an opportunity for 
 self-pleasing, and lets the years roll care- 
 lessly by, flinging a prayer now and then at 
 the feet of a presumably appeasable Deity;
 
 56 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 but otherwise living the life of the pur- 
 ring, well-fed cat by the fireside. 
 
 Life, from whatever source, means surely 
 something more than this; something more, 
 too, than the reckless, unnecessary and un- 
 availing gift of oneself, one's thoughts, aims, 
 emotions to every comer. To be unselfish 
 is one thing; futile self-sacrifice is another. 
 
 In almost every family there is one per- 
 sonality that preys upon the rest, or one that 
 is sacrificed to the others ; in the latter case 
 it may be a gentle, loving sister whose time, 
 sympathies and prospects are sacrificed to 
 one who is deemed richer in intellectual 
 gifts, or who makes larger demands. There 
 is no one individuality that has more claim 
 to assertion, to opportunity for development 
 than another, and each is responsible solely 
 for his or her own life. To make of the five 
 talents ten is the cardinal need. 
 
 A reasonable self-sacrifice, a true unself- 
 ishness should accompany the highest am- 
 bition as a natural and necessary feature in 
 soul-development; and not alone from per- 
 sonal motives. In the progress of evolution 
 of the higher self, a growing nearness to the 
 Source of Good would transmute the person- 
 al element into a wide, all-embracing sympa- 
 thy that would preclude the worship of self.
 
 WOMAN'S PLACE IN THE SOCIAL SCHEME 57 
 
 There is great opportunity for selfishness 
 in the marriage relation; an opportunity but 
 too often taken advantage of under cover 
 of a presumably holy institution. At the 
 bottom of the egotistical disregard of a 
 wife's wishes in intimate sexual matters lies 
 the old, uncivilized idea of the serfdom of 
 women. As has been wisely said : "To man 
 the freedom of sex is granted; on woman 
 the burden of sex is laid." The attitude is 
 unfair and illogical; unfair because she is 
 the chief sufferer, especially if, instead of 
 the eager response that should meet the 
 mate's advances, there is but a passive toler- 
 ance or a coerced compliance; illogical be- 
 cause if the chief end and aim of the woman 
 be the bearing of healthy children, that end 
 is jeopardized and rendered problematical 
 by the desecration of her desires and the 
 perversion of her emotions. 
 
 A man who under the protection of the 
 marriage relation leads a life of incontinence 
 and debauchery, with a wife for the victim, 
 has only himself to blame if she turn from 
 his caresses with loathing and fails in de- 
 votion to the children who are the acciden- 
 tal outcome of an undesired and distaste- 
 ful intercourse.
 
 58 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 The ordinary male human being is apt 
 to be unimaginative and short-sighted, a 
 creature who eats too much and so offends 
 and degrades his appetite, drinks too much 
 and damages and renders insensible the nerve 
 centres of appreciation, smokes to excess 
 and can no longer enjoy the delicate scents 
 that once pleased him; prostitutes the joys 
 of love so that they are no longer joys but 
 an unreasoning and unreasonable hunger. 
 
 The only man who truly knows the bliss 
 of passion is the temperate man; the only 
 husband who knows the true joy that pos- 
 session gives, is he who makes his requests 
 exquisitely rare. Compare the pleasure of 
 the brutal sensualist who uses a wife as a 
 means for his personal gratification without 
 regard or care, and gains for himself the 
 dullness of an unsatisfied satiety, with the 
 joy of the lover who reads an unspoken in- 
 vitation and responds to it, who knows the 
 glow of a great, reciprocal, passionate gift, 
 a^mutual outpouring of love that leaves the 
 quiet of an utter peace and the gladness of 
 a memory of delight. To the average man, 
 whether he admits it or not, a woman is in 
 either one of two positions, either upon a 
 pedestal where he worships her from afar,
 
 WOMAN'S PLACE IN THE SOCIAL SCHEME 59 
 
 or beneath his feet; no sane woman covets 
 either posture. 
 
 Is there really any essential difference in 
 the intellectual, physical or moral make-up 
 of a man and a woman? 
 
 Differences of training have of necessity 
 produced different results, and the differing 
 ideals held up before the mind's eye of the 
 boy and the girl could not but operate as 
 they have done. A flawless purity perpet- 
 ually before the girl as an ideal, necessa- 
 rily becomes a part of her life; so that a 
 glad pride in maidenly or matronly virtue, 
 and a grand defense of her honor are what 
 we might expect from her. The converse is, 
 of course, no less true. A type of hero of 
 the Don Juan style who carries all before 
 him in matters of the heart; a lying proverb 
 become a household phrase, and "wild oats" 
 a necessary part of a young man's education ; 
 lewd stories and suggestive jeers a perpetual 
 and taken-for-granted item in his intercourse 
 with his fellows; the example of men 
 of recognized immorality who find favor 
 where a diffident and right-living youth is 
 unregarded; these things produce exactly 
 what we might expect; the fruit is accord- 
 ing to the sowing.
 
 60 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 But, allowing for these radical differences 
 of environment and teaching, have not nor- 
 mal, healthy men and women practically the 
 same temptations, the same desires, the same 
 capabilities? The differences are in degree, 
 not in essence. The less we accentuate the 
 educated differences, the more we encourage 
 the similarity in quality, the nearer we get 
 to perfection. 
 
 For example, we say that a man is strong, 
 a woman is gentle; yet it is not the animal, 
 brutal strength in a man that we admire; 
 an ox or an elephant could give us that; it 
 is his power to protect, his strength to gov- 
 ern, his restrained force. And when to these 
 are added something of the tenderness and 
 softness of touch and manner that we asso- 
 ciate with the gentleness of a woman, then 
 is the masculine strength a perfect thing. 
 
 In the same way, it is not the gentleness 
 of weakness that we admire in a woman, 
 the insipidity of powerlessness, the liability 
 to faint away at a threat of danger, the tim- 
 idity that screams at a mouse. It is the 
 gentleness that shudders at sin, yet takes 
 the sinner by the hand; the gentleness that 
 soothes little children, and touches the suf- 
 fering like the breath of a mountain breeze;
 
 WOMAN'S PLACE IN THE SOCIAL SCHEME 61 
 
 the gentleness that carries a divine sweet- 
 ness and perfume with it; if to these be 
 added a virile courage and a manly vigor and 
 endurance, is not the gentleness tenfold more 
 beautiful, a thousand times more admirable, 
 a perfect thing? 
 
 So through the range of the other so- 
 called masculine and feminine characteris- 
 tics : a man's honesty, a woman's tact, a man's 
 masterfulness, a woman's submission, a man's 
 disposition to rove, a woman's homekeeping. 
 All the qualities that have, with an absurd 
 precision and definiteness, been apportioned 
 severally to the sexes, can only attain their 
 highest point of beauty and excellence when 
 modified, aided, and illumined by the op- 
 posite characteristic. 
 
 We are essentially peers; and the world 
 will never know the possibilities of humanity 
 until that eternal balance is recognized, and 
 man and woman stand face to face, unequal 
 in stature and physical strength, but on the 
 level ground of a moral and spiritual equality, 
 with the same social laws to govern their ac- 
 tions,thesame sincerity and candor of dealing, 
 the same ingenuous and guileless knowledge, 
 the same fearless outlook on life. Woman 
 the helpmate, not the slave; man the pro-
 
 62 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 tector not the master. Only thus shall we 
 have a perfect union. 
 
 In battling for franchise rights, in claim- 
 ing her place among the thinkers and the 
 workers of the day, irrespective of the fact 
 of sex-difference, in proclaiming her free- 
 dom from a past servitude, our latter-day 
 woman has forgotten to demand a right that 
 should be hers of inherent justice; the right 
 to choose, unbiassed and fearlessly, the 
 fatherhood of her child. 
 
 As it is to-day, economic conditions and a 
 weak ignorance control the most important 
 of all our social actions. In the majority 
 of cases a woman does not choose, in any 
 real sense of the word, the man who is to 
 share her responsibility in the bringing of 
 children into the world. She has very prob- 
 ably been brought up to be economically 
 dependent, and so accepts an inferior man 
 who will take upon himself the burden of 
 her livelihood. She does not, it may be sur- 
 mised, look very closely into his record, her- 
 editary or personal; her concern, so she 
 would argue, is not for future generations 
 but for personal, present freedom from care. 
 
 The question of woman's financial inde- 
 pendence is a grave one; we cannot attempt
 
 WOMAN'S PLACE IN THE SOCIAL SCHEME 63 
 
 fully to argue it here; an obvious step in the 
 right direction and one which we are surely 
 taking is to educate our daughters to such 
 magnificent physical health and such mental 
 proficiency that they may not be driven to 
 marriage as the only refuge from poverty. 
 
 The second cause of the non-ability of 
 women to choose a life partner with wisdom, 
 is the utter ignorance of such in all that per- 
 tains to the realm of sex. Absolutely un- 
 acquainted with the laws of heredity, with 
 but the dimmest idea of the results of con- 
 sanguinous unions, with no instruction to 
 influence them to distinguish the true from 
 the false, the healthy from the diseased, a 
 large number of our women deem the first 
 stirrings of sex-impulse an indication and 
 justification of a marriage that is subsequent- 
 ly proved undesirable, of procreation that is 
 unwise and unjustifiable. 
 
 I wish to lay special emphasis on the stu- 
 pidity of our present system of education 
 for girls; stupid not because of what is now 
 taught but because of what is left untaught. 
 I believe in girls learning all the ologies 
 and sciences and accomplishments that they 
 can stand without strain. Given the same 
 freedom of outdoor life and exercise they
 
 64 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 are as capable of mental effort as are their 
 brothers. The race will never make the pro- 
 gress it should until our women are fully 
 and amply educated, until their minds are 
 as logical and acute as are their brothers'. 
 Our colleges are doing fine work, not only 
 in the direction of mental development, but 
 of physical prowess. 
 
 But that there is a lack in an educational 
 system that takes no account of a responsi- 
 bility that is, generally speaking, inevitable, 
 it is scarcely necessary to demonstrate. As 
 Mrs. Oilman very forcefully puts it: "We 
 find our young women reared in an attitude 
 which is absolutely unconscious of and often 
 injurious to their coming motherhood. An 
 irresponsible, indifferent, ignorant class of 
 beings so far as motherhood is concerned. 
 They are fitted to attract the other sex for 
 economic uses, or at most, for mutual grati- 
 fication, but not for motherhood. They are 
 reared in unbroken ignorance of their sup- 
 posed principal duties, knowing nothing of 
 these duties till they enter upon them. This 
 is as though all men were to be soldiers 
 with the fate of nations in their hands, and 
 no man taught or told a word of war or 
 military service, until he entered the battle-
 
 WOMAN'S PLACE IN THE SOCIAL SCHEME 65 
 
 field. The education of young women has 
 no department of maternity. It is considered 
 indelicate to give this consecrated function- 
 ary any previous knowledge of her sacred 
 duties. The most important and wonderful 
 of human functions is left from age to age 
 in the hands of absolutely untaught women. 
 The children of humanity are born into the 
 arms of an endless succession of untrained 
 mothers, who bring to the care and teaching 
 of their children neither education for that 
 wonderful work nor experience therein; 
 they bring merely the intense accumulated 
 force of a brute instinct, the blind devoted 
 passion of the mother for the child. Simply 
 to love the child does not serve him, unless 
 specific acts of service express that love. 
 What these acts of service are, and how 
 they are performed make or mar his life 
 forever. 
 
 Observe the futility of unaided maternal 
 love and instinct in the simple act of feeding 
 the child. Belonging to order mammalia 
 the human mother has an instinctive desire 
 to suckle her young (some ultra -civilized 
 have lost even that.) But this instinct has 
 not taught her such habits of life as insure 
 her ability to fulfil this natural function.
 
 66 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 Failing in the natural method, of what fur- 
 ther use is instinct in the nourishment of the 
 child? Can maternal instinct discriminate 
 between Marrow's Food, Hayrick's Food 
 and Pestle's Food, Penny & Whistle's Ster- 
 ilized Milk and all the other "infant's foods" 
 which are prepared and put upon the mar- 
 ket by men! If the "bottle baby" survives 
 the loss of mother's milk, when he comes 
 to the table, does maternal instinct suffice 
 then to administer a proper diet for young 
 children? Let the doctor and the under- 
 taker answer. 
 
 Women enter a position which gives into 
 their hands direct responsibility for the life 
 or death of the whole human race with 
 neither study nor experience, with no shad- 
 ow of preparation or guarantee of capability. 
 So far as they give it a thought they fondly 
 imagine that this mysterious "maternal in- 
 stinct" will see them through. Instruction, 
 if needed, they will pick up when the time 
 comes, experience they will acquire as the 
 children appear. "I guess I know how to 
 bring up children'' cried the resentful old 
 lady who was being advised, ''I've buried 
 seven." The record of untrained instinct as a 
 maternal faculty in the human race is to be
 
 WOMAN'S PLACE IN THE SOCIAL SCHEME 67 
 
 read on the rows and rows of little grave 
 stones which crowd our cemetaries. The 
 experience gained by practising on the child 
 is frequently buried with it. 
 
 As to the most important thing of all, the 
 choice of the father of her child, we ask, 
 how can a young girl know a good prospec- 
 tive father? That she is not so educated as 
 to know proves her unfitness for her great 
 task. That she does not think or care proves 
 her dishonorable indifference to her great 
 duty. She can in no way shirk the respon- 
 sibility for criminal carelessness in choosing 
 a father for her children unless, indeed, there 
 were no choice, no good men left on earth. 
 
 Moreover, we are not obliged to leave 
 this crucial choice in the hands of young 
 girls. Motherhood is the work of grown 
 women, not of half-children, and when we 
 honestly care as much for motherhood as 
 we pretend, we shall train the woman for 
 her duty, not the girl for her guileless man- 
 oeuvres to secure a husband. We talk about 
 the noble duties of a mother, but our maidens 
 are educated for economically successful 
 marriage. We try to get an "experienced" 
 nurse. We insist on an "experienced" phy- 
 sician. But our idea of an experienced
 
 68 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 mother is simply one who has borne many 
 children, as if parturition was an educative 
 process! 
 
 To experience the pangs of childbirth, or 
 the further pangs of a baby's funeral adds 
 nothing whatever to the mother's knowledge 
 of the proper care, clothing, feeding and 
 teaching of a child. The educative depart- 
 ment of maternity is not a personal function 
 it is in its very nature a social function; and 
 we fail grievously in its fulfilment." 
 
 During a period of six years, ending in 
 the year 1890, there were 18,862 still-born 
 children in the City of New York, about 
 one-thirteenth of the entire death aggregate. 
 Were these the welcome off -spring of mated 
 and loving parents, of healthy and well-sexed 
 stock ? It may not be generally known that 
 one-third of our entire population die before 
 the age of five years. Is it reasonable to 
 claim that negligence after birth is the sole 
 cause for this wholesale slaughter? I ven- 
 ture to claim that the large majority of these 
 deaths are due to the mating of diseased or 
 unloving couples, and to the physical sub- 
 jection of woman in the marriage relation. 
 
 When we see every day around us women 
 bearing children who have been conceived
 
 WOMAN'S PLACE IN THE SOCIAL SCHEME 69 
 
 in revolt, disgust, or, at best, in a despairing 
 apathy; when we hear every day the stories 
 of women who are living with mem whom 
 they despise or at best merely tolerate, yet 
 to whom they annually bear a child; when 
 we take in our arms infants who have been 
 the result of rape practised by a half-intoxi- 
 cated man upon the wife whom he has sworn 
 to honor, we are not surprised at the facts 
 given us by statistics, do not wonder at the 
 army of defectives, insane and criminals that 
 perpetually threaten our life and peace; that 
 our state governments expend $50,000,000 
 annually for charitable purposes; that one 
 out of every 755 persons in our population 
 is a prisoner; that here in the United States 
 we average 14,000 murders a year, or 38 
 murders a day, besides 100 executions and 
 100 lynchings annually. 
 
 Let a woman understand that it is a crime 
 to bear children to a man whom she does 
 not thoroughly respect and love; that lone- 
 liness and poverty are better than a legalized 
 prostitution or enforced maternity, and that 
 she is and will be forever responsible for 
 the children to whom she gives a heritage 
 of feeble health, arrested brain development 
 and perverted sexuality.
 
 70 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 Dr. Brixton of Liverpool, England, tells us 
 that from ten to twelve per cent of our deaf- 
 mutes are the children of cousins. In Dr. S. 
 T. Howe's Report to the Massachusetts Leg- 
 islature, he says: "One-twentieth of the idiots 
 were the children of cousins. Seventeen such 
 marriages produced 95 children, of whom 
 44 are idiots and 12 more puny." 
 
 Would the knowledge of such facts as 
 these have a deterrent effect? Would it be 
 wise in the interest of a healthy nation that 
 our young people should be made acquain- 
 ted with these and similar statistics? 
 
 In a marriage choice it is important to 
 guard against duplicating in the wife or hus- 
 band personal weakness or peculiarities; on 
 general principles we may say that marrying 
 opposites will produce normal children; the 
 cautious should mate with the impulsive, the 
 careless with the neat, the quick-tempered 
 with the equable, the nervous with the phleg- 
 matic, the stout with the thin. In the case 
 of any physical weakness this recommenda- 
 tion is imperative. A woman with pulmon- 
 ary weakness if mated to a man of strong 
 lungs and good physical record may not, and 
 probably will not hand on her weakness to 
 her children; let her marry a man who is
 
 WOMAN'S PLACE IN THE SOCIAL SCHEME 71 
 
 similarly affected, or in whose family there 
 is tendency towards phthisis and the diffi- 
 culty will appear as a fatal disease in the 
 next generation. 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to point out that 
 a similarity in tastes is essential to good 
 comradeship; and that in culture and the 
 ideals of life, equality is to be desired, if 
 indeed it be not absolutely essential to a 
 satisfactory and harmonious marriage. 
 
 Looking at the matter solely from a utili- 
 tarian standpoint, it is an egregious blunder 
 in economics that our young people are not 
 thoroughly and wisely informed in these 
 matters. A scientific study of heredity would 
 be vastly more important both to the indi- 
 vidual and to the State than that of geom- 
 etry: and if the government would place 
 this study in its public-school curriculum, 
 and employ efficient teachers of it, there 
 might be a very definite decrease in the 
 number of defectives, idiots, feeble-minded 
 and criminals for whom the State now pro- 
 vides.
 
 MOTHERHOOD A JOY 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 HERE is a gladness that no 
 man living can ever compre- 
 hend; there is an awe of 
 which the purity-clad angel 
 bending in the high courts of 
 heaven could have but a dim 
 perception; there is a silent ecstasy that the 
 saint, in his night-watch rapture, but faintly 
 realizes; these are things mysterious, stu- 
 pendous, uninterpreted, that only Divinity 
 and the mother know. 
 
 The night's agony is over; the silence is 
 heavy with a great expectation, and the 
 weary head turns slowly on the pillow, with 
 wistful, questioning eyes. There is a whis- 
 per, hardly more than a breath : "My baby ;" 
 and the wee warm bundle is laid softly in 
 the bed. A long, deep gaze, and the mother 
 closes her eyes lest the attendants should 
 read the thing that is too great, too precious, 
 too holy for any but herself and God. 
 
 In that moment she has seen things hither- 
 to undreamed of; she is near to the Source
 
 MOTHERHOOD A JOY 73 
 
 of Life, and the doubts that beset her in 
 times past, doubts of the design of things, 
 doubts of the goodness of Power, are swept 
 away as, at the sea-brink, the smoke of a 
 passing mist is blown to the forgetfulness 
 of the all-absorbing ocean. 
 
 It needs no priest to tell her of the love 
 of the All-Father now; she knows. And 
 the Supreme Self-sacrifice, she understands 
 that now. 
 
 The world, too, has changed with the God. 
 It is the world of mothers, of little child- 
 ren; what before was an undefined impulse 
 now has an infinite meaning, and the truth 
 of an eternal sisterhood can never be lost 
 again. 
 
 The fully-awakened soul reaches out with 
 a wide, sure sympathy; and in the heart of 
 a great stillness the new dawn wakes. The 
 sense of oneness with the Eternal, the cre- 
 ating principle, will lie through the years 
 hidden away in the deeps of consciousness; 
 and life, and hope, and the power to do 
 are clothed in the white samite of a great 
 and inexpressible beauty. 
 
 This is what the realization of mother- 
 hood may mean to a woman; this, and much 
 more; and all apart from and beyond the
 
 74 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 delight of personal possession, the pride of 
 accomplishment, the joy of a common own- 
 ership with the man she loves. 
 
 Let us turn from the spiritual significance 
 of the epoch to consider the material con- 
 ditions of the things that pertain to mother- 
 hood and to the development of the race. 
 
 There is no thoughtful student of the sub- 
 ject who will not agree with the Malthusians 
 that every consideration of race advance- 
 ment and individual liberty calls for jthe 
 restriction, by every legitimate means, of 
 the begetting of children born to a heritage 
 of disease, indigence and insanity; we need 
 not, however, dwell at any length upon the 
 negative side of the question. 
 
 There is a good deal of talk today among 
 students of the question of population, about 
 "fewer children and better ones;" and a 
 reasonable discretion as to the number of 
 a family, with due consideration as to the 
 conditions, physical and financial, of the 
 parents would seem the most elementary 
 wisdom. The old-fashioned expression of 
 a vaguely imagined Christian idea, that the 
 Lord was responsible for the number of 
 children in a family, and that he, therefore, 
 would provide, is out-of-date today. The
 
 MOTHERHOOD A JOY 75 
 
 inevitable question awkwardly obtruded it- 
 self who then is responsible for the child- 
 ren so unjustly branded as "illegitimate." 
 If the Lord, why this discrimination; if 
 not the Lord, then who? 
 
 As already suggested, the matter of off- 
 spring should be one of careful thought, 
 and wise consideration of conditions. But 
 for reasons that will be clear to every stu- 
 dent of this question, one hesitates to lay 
 too much stress upon this aspect of it. The 
 very poor, to whom this rule would most 
 strongly apply, are the very ones whom it 
 is impossible, at least under present condi- 
 tions, for us to reach. The rich usually will 
 not be troubled with large families of child- 
 ren, and the lives of luxury and idleness 
 which they lead would scarcely give us the 
 best results if they would. Leaving out, 
 then, the very poor, whom we do not desire 
 to have many children, and the rich who 
 will not have them, who then are to bear 
 the great sons and daughters that our coun- 
 try needs, who are to represent the bone 
 and sinew of the nation? The great middle 
 class, the thinking class, to which most of 
 us belong. 
 
 The question is, do we need caution
 
 76 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 against over-production or do we need, as 
 a whole, caution of another kind. What is 
 the tendency of the day? Let us look at 
 our own homes, and at those of our own 
 friends, and see what evidence we have. Do 
 we find suffering from the effect of exces- 
 sive child-bearing, or from the effects of 
 more or less successful attempts at abortion? 
 I do not think I need push this question 
 further. 
 
 It is estimated by authorities who have 
 made it their business to inquire carefully 
 into this matter that 32 per cent of the 
 300,000 epileptic and idiotic persons in the 
 United States have been the results of at- 
 tempts at abortion through drugs and other- 
 wise. While we have 90,000 epileptic and 
 feeble-minded children from this one cause, 
 and hundreds of thousands of still-born 
 children and sickly ones who die at an early 
 age all as a result of attempts at the de- 
 struction of embryo life, we must pause and 
 consider whether our young parents do not 
 need some other instruction than counsel 
 against over-numerous families. 
 
 It may not be generally known that we 
 have one insane person to every 460 sane 
 ones in this great republic of ours; that
 
 MOTHERHOOD A JOY 77 
 
 while the population of the city of New 
 York has increased one-third in three years 
 crime has increased over one-half. 
 
 Is there any connection between these 
 facts and the frequency of attempted abor- 
 tion ? This class of crime has increased more 
 than any other in the last twenty-five years. 
 Statistics of abortion, which probably would 
 not include over one-half the actual number 
 of cases, indicate that fully one-third as 
 many children are murdered before birth 
 as are born. 
 
 Is it to be wondered at if children born 
 of parents who have habitually murdered 
 their off-spring, should manifest criminal 
 tendencies? Is it any wonder that suicide 
 and homicide are on the increase? There 
 are many well authenticated instances where 
 the degeneracy of children, the inborn de- 
 sire to commit crime were known to be 
 the direct result of this attempt; where an- 
 cestry offered no possible clue, where the 
 parents were mild inoffensive persons (save 
 in this matter) and where the children from 
 babyhood evinced violent passions and mur- 
 derous tendencies. 
 
 The restriction of population as advocated 
 by social reformers, needless to say, con-
 
 78 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 templates no such iniquity as this; care, 
 wisdom, discretion, self-control, these are 
 the necessary and the sole factors in the 
 production of "fewer and better children." 
 
 We desire to prevent the over-population 
 of the tenement districts; but do we see to 
 it that our own children are well born ? Do 
 our babies come into a heritage of magni- 
 ficent health, moral and physical, and of su- 
 perb mental endowments, or are they the 
 chance off-spring of indolent and ignorant 
 parents, the result of desire on one hand and 
 concession on the other; the inheritors of 
 an undeveloped mentality, of vulgar preju- 
 dice, of irresponsible egotism? 
 
 The laws of heredity are inflexible; we 
 may cover up our weaknesses in our daily 
 intercourse with our fellows, we may dream 
 of averting punishment for misdeeds by 
 prayers to a placable Deity, but there is no 
 bargaining vrith heredity. 
 
 If I were to put my hand into the fire 
 deliberately, and pray to the Almighty that 
 I might not be burned, people would call 
 me a fool; but a woman will bear children 
 to a drunkard or a profligate and then pray 
 to God that her little ones may be pure and 
 noble, without any realization of her folly.
 
 MOTHERHOOD A JOY 79 
 
 Some years ago, a well-known woman 
 physician was lecturing in New York City 
 on the subject of heredity. At the con- 
 clusion of the lecture, a lady, who, with her 
 son, a lad of about seventeen, had occupied 
 a prominent seat in the hall, came upon the 
 platform and introduced herself to the lec- 
 turer. 
 
 "What you have been saying is true'' she 
 said: "but /am going to prove to the world 
 that, for the praying mother, God can over- 
 turn the laws of heredity." 
 
 "No, dear," said the lecturer, shaking her 
 head. 
 
 That mother was one for whom, a few 
 years later, every mother's heart in America 
 was aching; that boy was Carlyle Harris, 
 killed by electrical execution at 23 years of 
 age; the child of a dissipated and dissolute 
 father. 
 
 For motherhood to be truly a joy it is 
 essential that the child be started fairly. To 
 choose for the father of our children one 
 who is deserving of the honor, to marry a 
 man of upright and manly thought and life, 
 one who is, if possible, our complement in 
 temperament and attainments; to so govern 
 our life that the good in ourselves is fos-
 
 80 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 tered and the evil overcome; and to add to 
 these a good initial heredity, is to lay a sure 
 foundation for a great and noble soul. 
 
 By initial heredity is meant that heredity 
 which is set in motion by the thought which 
 dominates the parents before and at the time 
 of conception, and which is so very often 
 a powerful counteracting as well as aiding 
 influence in the child's life. 
 
 A high-souled son has been known to be 
 born to doubtful parents, who were at the 
 time mentally and spiritually exalted; and 
 cases are known of imbecile children who 
 were the result of very rare deviations from 
 rectitude, in cases of habitually temperate 
 fathers who, perhaps for one occasion only, 
 were in a state of intoxication. 
 
 Atavism, the heredity taken from the 
 grandparents and ancestors, has, of course, 
 to be reckoned with, and a man and woman 
 who wish their children to be perfect will 
 inquire closely into the constitution and fami- 
 ly history on both sides and order themselves 
 accordingly. 
 
 For the comfort of those who feel over- 
 weighted with a burden of bad heredity 
 which they fear to hand on to their child- 
 ren, it is well to lay stress on initial her-
 
 MOTHERHOOD A JOY 8 1 
 
 edity. In any case it must be remembered 
 that environment counts for much; heredity, 
 though sure and powerful, is no Juggernaut; 
 its influence may be arrested and modified 
 by the power of knowledge and will. 
 
 It is a well-known fact in the medical 
 world, and one taken into consideration by 
 the family physician in his diagnoses of 
 cases, that the eldest child in a family is 
 very likely to inherit family peculiarities 
 from which later children are exempt. The 
 "crank" as well as the genius is, more often 
 than not, the eldest child; it would almost 
 seem as though Nature, working towards 
 the highest point of development of the spe- 
 cies, were impatient to get rid of oddities 
 or undesirable family traits, and occasionally 
 crowds them all upon the head of the first- 
 born. 
 
 If this be the case, and if the fact of in- 
 itial heredity is to be accepted, we have an 
 unanswerable argument for the careful in- 
 struction of the young in sex matters. 
 
 The eldest child is usually conceived in 
 the early days of married life; what oppor- 
 tunity for modifying untoward or deterrent 
 family characteristics will the ignorant and 
 impetuous young man and woman have,
 
 82 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 unless instruction as to the importance and 
 possibilities of their own powers of thought 
 be given them in advance? 
 
 It may be noticed that a very large per- 
 centage of first-born children die in infancy 
 or before maturity is reached, if indeed the 
 child be not still-born; ignorance of sexual 
 laws and unrestrained indulgence in marital 
 relations during pregnancy may account 
 for this fact. 
 
 The heading of this chapter suggests the 
 question: In the social life of America as 
 it is at present, is motherhood a joy? We 
 are reluctantly obliged to confess that, at 
 least in city communities, it is not. The 
 testimony of thousands of physicians make 
 the answer but too decisive. What is ap- 
 parently the dominating desire in the minds 
 of women of the better classes in America 
 today? The desire to avoid bearing children. 
 
 It seems as though the maternal instinct 
 were being visited by some strange blight; 
 and also that the desire for the protection 
 of life were a thing not to be comprehended 
 by feminine nature of a certain type. The 
 crime of abortion is increasing to an alarm- 
 ing extent, and the perpetrators seem to be 
 lost to all sense of shame. If the women
 
 MOTHERHOOD A JOY 83 
 
 who beset the physicians with requests for 
 criminal operation were young girls who 
 had erred and who dreaded the world's cen- 
 sure, one could understand the impulse; but 
 when married women either thoughtlessly, 
 or weakly, or viciously clamor for an un- 
 righteous deliverance from what should be 
 their pride and joy, it is indeed time to in- 
 quire into the cause. 
 
 The same extraordinary reasoning that will 
 make a woman refuse to tell an absolute, 
 literal untruth, and yet will allow her to 
 misrepresent by implication or insinuation 
 to any extent, seems to hold good in the 
 matter of the taking of embryo and infant 
 life. 
 
 To strangle the child after birth would 
 be murder and monstrous, to destroy the 
 unborn child after life is felt and before 
 birth would be a lesser crime, but still wrong ; 
 but to take away the life at an earlier stage, 
 to prevent the growth into the thing that 
 afterwards becomes valuable, this is con- 
 sidered, by the class of women to whom I 
 have referred, as no harm at all! 
 
 In destroying the foetus in its most ele- 
 mentary stage a woman destroys her child 
 just as surely as though she waited .a few
 
 84 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 months and then performed the same act; 
 this is so obvious a conclusion that it would 
 seem a waste of time to present it were it 
 not for the fact of the widespread and egre- 
 gious ignorance and sophistry behind which 
 women of the day shelter themselves in this 
 regard. 
 
 If, then, motherhood is often not a joy, 
 and such a conclusion would seem to be 
 inevitable, we are naturally driven into a 
 search for the reasons. These may be di- 
 vided into four classes: 
 
 (1) Physical incapacity and fear. 
 
 (2) Undesired maternity forced upon the 
 woman through the selfishness of the hus- 
 band. 
 
 (3) Social ambitions and personal self- 
 ishness, and 
 
 (4) Inadequate means of support for a 
 large family. 
 
 i. Physical incapacity and fear. Physi- 
 cally speaking, the generality of our city-bred 
 women are not properly fitted for real mari- 
 tal joy or for happy childbearing; and not 
 until there is radical change of thought and 
 life will motherhood and sex-intercourse be 
 the exquisite satisfaction that they were 
 designed to be.
 
 MOTHERHOOD A JOY 85 
 
 If women were in proper condition phys- 
 ically and mentally there need be no fear 
 in the approach of the hours of parturition, 
 little outcry or misery in the consummation. 
 
 A body properly trained and developed, 
 and a reasonable, well-balanced mind, will 
 approach the ordeal in a spirit of glad cour- 
 age, and somewhat with this thought: "It is 
 a great thing that I am about to do, the 
 bringing into the world of a new life; let 
 me do it grandly, temperately, courageously. 
 Great pain requires a brave spirit; I do not 
 underrate the pain, but I bring all my force 
 to meet and utilize it. Let me make of this 
 act the great thing that it may be; give it 
 dignity, and so uphold the beauty of ma- 
 ternity." 
 
 Although few women can be found to 
 look upon it in this light I cannot but feel 
 that this pain of childbiith is one most 
 easily borne if the mental condition is right. 
 Allowing for a state of happy expectation 
 of the child-life, and a normal, healthy con- 
 dition of body, mind and emotion, I cannot 
 understand a lack of supreme exultation in 
 the definite, necessary physical suffering. 
 
 A pain which is the result of unhealthy 
 living or a condition of disease carries with
 
 86 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 it a sense of hopelessness and helplessness; 
 the laws of nature have been defied, and 
 the penalty must be paid. In the case of 
 the ushering into the world of a new exist- 
 ence there is no such feeling. At work with 
 the Creative Power, a woman is performing 
 her unique task; every throe has a mean- 
 ing, draws her nearer to the consummation. 
 The feeling that she is not expiating but 
 accomplishing, that she is not paying a 
 penalty but executing a high function; this 
 would seem to be enough to close the lips 
 and prevent a lamentation and outcry that 
 both hinders the achievement physiologi- 
 cally, and offends the innate sense of what 
 is seemly and legitimate. 
 
 While I feel this to be true, I realize that 
 every allowance should be made for the 
 distress of one who is called iipon to bear 
 this responsibility for the first time. 
 
 The unknown is always the terrible, and 
 an inevitable nervousness shatters the foun- 
 dation of courage. Even this condition, how- 
 ever, may be mitigated by wise thought as 
 the crisis approaches, by a gathering together 
 af all the forces of the soul, and by refus- 
 ing to listen to the harrowing tales which 
 so-called friends may be unwise enough
 
 MOTHERHOOD A JOY 87 
 
 to consider a fitting prelude to the occasion. 
 
 In the case of an experienced woman, 
 there is no such excuse; I look forward to 
 a time when not only will the physical an- 
 guish be less acute, but the bearing of it 
 be conducted with dignity and silence, when 
 a woman, with all her great womanly ca- 
 pacity for endurance condensed into a god- 
 like effort, with a glad sense of power, of 
 personal control over physical expression, 
 will glory in the work that is given her to do. 
 
 2. Undesired maternity. As the birth of 
 a child into a home of love is one of the 
 most beautiful of life-pictures, so is the 
 thought of an undesired maternity evil and 
 revolting. 
 
 The trying months of pregnancy unac- 
 companied by joyful expectation or tender 
 ante-natal love can only be thought of as a 
 species of purgatory. No woman who has 
 any regard for her own welfare or that of 
 her child, will trust the grave matter of con- 
 ception to chance. That the majority of 
 children in a family are thus begotten, is 
 but too true; hence the increasing army of 
 women who see in the horrors of abortion 
 their only chance of escape. 
 
 Apart from the moral evil implied in the
 
 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 wilful destruction of life; and apart also 
 from the fact that in many cases the de- 
 sired end is not attained, and the unfortun- 
 ate child is finally born with the seeds of 
 self-destruction, or at least with a melan- 
 choly unrest and morbidness in his little 
 soul; it is universally conceded by physi- 
 cians that the physical result of abortion 
 upon woman is disastrous in the extreme. 
 
 If, then, there are to be no chance child- 
 ren, how is it to be avoided ? How are the 
 vehement demands of Nature to be satisfied ? 
 
 The Malthusians think they have settled 
 the difficulty by advocating the use of me- 
 chanical appliances; and in one form or 
 another similar methods are employed by 
 those_who would avoid parenthood. 
 
 At the best, and without regard to the 
 ethical significance of such procedure, there 
 is no sensitive man or woman who will not 
 shrink from an alternative that threatens the 
 beauty of the moment with prosaic sugges- 
 tion; eliminate the poetry from the act and 
 you have taken away all that is worth having. 
 
 In speaking of the legitimate use of the 
 freedom in sexual matters afforded by mar- 
 riage, one is touching upon a supremely 
 difficult and delicate subject.
 
 MOTHERHOOD A JOY 89 
 
 The ideal life is easy to perceive and to 
 advocate; absolute continence except where 
 there is loving desire for offspring, and 
 during the months of pregnancy. 
 
 Experience shows that however wise it 
 may be to put forward the highest as the 
 ideal, the attainment of it is as difficult to 
 the average man or woman as the leading 
 of the Christ-life is to the average Christian. 
 It is a serious question how far one is jus- 
 tified in even a tacit lowering of the stand- 
 ard, and yet to the practical mind some 
 compromise would seem inevitable. 
 
 As the preacher honestly and earnestly 
 preaches the true Christ-life to his flock, 
 while himself falling far below the stand- 
 ards which he presents, so may we, in whose 
 hands are the malleable minds of children, 
 inculcate in them the principles that gov- 
 ern a perfect sexual life. I do not doubt 
 that the children of the coming generation, 
 wisely guided by the newly -awakened 
 thought of parents and teachers, and being 
 themselves the offspring of noble intentions 
 and aspirations, may be able, in this regard, 
 to reach a higher level of thought and life 
 than the possible of today. 
 
 The present generation, however, is the
 
 90 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 result of the carelessness and ignorance of 
 the past. Men's ideas of sex are permeated 
 with sensuality, women's with prudery; and 
 the ideal sex-life is a rare actuality. 
 
 In using the term "chance child" I do not 
 wish to convey a wrong impression. 
 
 In the case of two who love each other 
 truly and devotedly, to whom every act of 
 coition is a sacrament, a tender, exquisite 
 and unselfish impulse, and who are ever 
 ready to welcome the advent of a child 
 with love and joy, there can be no "chance 
 child." When each love-embrace is given 
 with the thought that its result will be joy- 
 fully accepted, there is no question as to the 
 beneficent influences which will surround 
 the child, if such should come. 
 
 My warning is directed to the very large 
 number of married people whose cohabita- 
 tion is in defiance of parenthood; who, while 
 they are not willing to restrict themselves 
 in sexual indulgence, resolutely and deter- 
 minately refuse to contemplate the responsi- 
 bility or the care of a new life; who are 
 leading lives that are contrary to nature, and 
 who must, perforce, pay the penalty in their 
 own persons, and in those of their acciden- 
 tally-conceived children.
 
 MOTHERHOOD A JOY 9! 
 
 Dislike of so-called Malthusian practices 
 brings forward the old problem. It is sug- 
 gested by Dr. Stockham of Chicago and 
 other authors of recent date that a reason- 
 able restraint should be exercised during 
 the time when conception is likely to take 
 place. They claim that it will be found 
 quite feasible, during the period when com- 
 plete expression is undesirable, to deliber- 
 ately turn the thought from passionate into 
 affectionate channels; to create an ideal, 
 loving intercourse from which the disturb- 
 ing elements of desire are eliminated. 
 
 While this method of marital continence 
 has thus been set forth in various works, 
 the exponents of the system do not, of course, 
 recommend abstinence. Stress, however, is 
 laid on the fact that the sex-act is not nec- 
 essarily a procreative act; that physical and 
 mental strength may be augmented by an 
 intercourse that is avowedly and intention- 
 ally for love purposes, and reciprocal and 
 affectionate in its expression. It is claimed 
 that the satisfactory conduct of such an act 
 presupposes a controlled imagination and 
 the exercise of will-power, especially in the 
 initial or experimental stage; after this man- 
 ner of living has become a habit it no longer
 
 92 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 presents any difficulties. The mind, being 
 the controlling power, dictates with abso- 
 lute authority. 
 
 Whether or not this method of marital 
 living represents the highest is a matter for 
 conjecture; but in so far as it is a decided 
 advance upon the self-indulgence and irre- 
 sponsibility of the past it may be worth 
 consideration. 
 
 However a woman may be satisfied to 
 sacrifice her personal wishes to the demands 
 or coercion of a husband in all matters re- 
 lating to her own desires and welfare solely, 
 she may not, righteously, yield one inch 
 where the moral or physical health of her 
 child is concerned. It is to be questioned 
 how far she is justified in sacrificing her- 
 self even as to personal liberty; a servile 
 mother is not likely to give birth to a cour- 
 ageous and noble son. 
 
 But in all matters that concern the defi- 
 nite well-being of her offspring, the mother 
 is bound by every law of nature and of 
 reason to be supreme mistress of herself. 
 She owes it both to the child and to future 
 generations that he shall be well born; and 
 no man who is fit to be the father of her 
 children will do aught but respect her the
 
 MOTHERHOOD A JOY 93 
 
 more, if in these matters she is inflexible. 
 The fault, as a rule, does not lie with the 
 woman, except in so far as cowardice and 
 a fear of consequence may render her re- 
 sponsible. 
 
 A pregnant woman, more especially in 
 the later stages of her condition, should be 
 left absolutely free to conduct her wonder- 
 ful work in quietness and sobriety; instinct 
 points unqualifiedly to the absence of sex- 
 ual excitement at a season when the growth 
 of a new life is in progress; and there is 
 no doubt that, as before suggested, undue 
 indulgence at this time may endow the child 
 with an abnormal sensuality. 
 
 Hitherto, we must frankly admit, a woman 
 has had little or no power of decision as to 
 her maternity; the question being decided 
 if not by, certainly through, the will of the 
 husband. All true students of the sex ques- 
 tion at the present day maintain that this 
 condition of subserviency on the part of the 
 wife is a fatal error; that only the deliber- 
 ate choice of the woman should rule; that 
 only when she feels and knows that the 
 time has come when she is physically and 
 mentally qualified should she take upon her- 
 self the responsibility of maternity.
 
 94 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 It is contrary to our ideal thought, as it 
 is, we believe, contrary to the great scheme 
 of things, that there should be, in ever so 
 faint a degree, antagonism or difference of 
 opinion between husband and wife with 
 reference to this, the greatest of all social 
 questions. Under ideal conditions, the hus- 
 band has an equally intense interest, and as 
 judicious forethought for the well-being of 
 his offspring as the wife who has the more 
 absorbing and difficult task to perform. 
 Fatherhood is to him no less important than 
 is her motherhood to her; and it requires 
 but the knowledge of the best in condi- 
 tion, environment and habit to make him 
 live his life cheerfully and gladly in accor- 
 dance with it. 
 
 On the other hand, as has been suggested, 
 
 7 OO t 
 
 the majority of our women are, from one 
 cause or another, sexually deficient; and this 
 fact serves greatly to complicate the situation. 
 In many cases such a condition is the re- 
 sult of a wrong method of life, of seden- 
 tary habits, of pernicious feeding; sometimes 
 it is caused by malformations which demand 
 the assistance of the surgeon; whatever may 
 be the cause, a step in the right direction 
 will be taken when women so afflicted rec-
 
 MOTHERHOOD A JOY 95 
 
 ognize their condition as one to be deplored, 
 and duty as requiring them to use every 
 legitimate means to remove from them- 
 selves the stigma of imperfection. 
 
 There is no doubt that much of the sex- 
 ual inertness on the part of wives is due 
 to the ignorance and carelessness of their 
 husbands. Many men who deplore the 
 coldness of their wives could study femi- 
 nine sex-nature with satisfactory results to 
 themselves. Woman's passion has its source 
 in affection, and cannot (generally speaking) 
 be disassociated from it. Hence it follows 
 that all advances should be through loving 
 caresses and tender, patient love-making. A 
 woman is a delicate musical instrument upon 
 which the man whom she loves may play 
 at will, provided he has, to start with, a com- 
 prehension of the requirements and mechan- 
 ism of his instrument. Failing this knowl- 
 edge, he may, and, in the majority of cases, 
 does make mistakes which prove fatal to his 
 own happiness and inflict upon the woman 
 he loves not only crushing blows to her 
 sensitiveness, but in many instances irrem- 
 ediable mischief to her physical organism. 
 Looking at the matter solely from the point 
 of view of his own sexual satisfaction, no
 
 96 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 man who has known the bliss of a union 
 whose pleasure is mutual will ever be con- 
 tented with a lesser and more selfish ex- 
 perience. 
 
 3. Social ambition and personal selfish- 
 ness. It is the fault of our present social 
 life that both men and women are animated 
 by a craze for position and amusement of 
 which our parents and grandparents knew 
 nothing. 
 
 The woman of society declines to bear 
 children because of the months of enforced 
 absence from her fashionable circle; refuses 
 to nurse her own child because, for the same 
 reason, it is more convenient to let another 
 woman perform that office for her. And 
 both husband and wife, deeming social 
 pleasures an indispensible accompaniment 
 of life find their income insufficient, and 
 declare they cannot afford to have children. 
 This brings us to 
 
 4. Inadequate means of support for a large 
 family; the excuse most often urged, and 
 the one that has on the face of it some 
 elements of reason. 
 
 That my reply to this well known argu- 
 will be of the nature of a plea for a large 
 family I shall not deny.
 
 MOTHERHOOD A JOY 97 
 
 No sensible man or woman but will dep- 
 recate in every possible way the multipli- 
 cation of children to parents who are men- 
 tally, morally and physically inefficient. Our 
 poorhouses and jails are full of speaking 
 examples of reckless and unjustifiable pro- 
 creation. But in the case of young, vigorous 
 men and women, men and women neither 
 so poor that they must lead lives of priva- 
 tion, nor so rich that the luxury that enervates 
 and the idleness that demoralizes shall have 
 rendered them unworthy of the duty of par- 
 enthood, there is every argument in favor 
 of a large, interdependent family. 
 
 As far as we can judge, the answer to 
 the plea of insufficient income resolves it- 
 self into the question, What are the neces- 
 saries of life? 
 
 The amount of money yearly spent by a 
 man in the indulgence of habits that are 
 not only useless but injurious, would feed, 
 clothe and educate a child. The same may 
 be said of a fashionable woman. 
 
 Why not give up this or that luxury and 
 take upon one's self the duty and care of 
 another young life? Why not live simply, 
 plainly, unostentatiously and rear a houseful 
 of children who will be a glory and a happi-
 
 98 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 ness, who will be near to cheer old age, in 
 whom parents would see themselves with 
 the angles and roughness rubbed off, in 
 whom they could re-live their own lives 
 and so gain twice over what the world 
 holds of good? 
 
 And in the interests of the children them- 
 selves what is best? 
 
 I have yet to see the young man or 
 woman who has been the worse for straight- 
 ened circumstances in early life. On the 
 contrary, the need of diligence and appli- 
 cation, the incentive for exertion, exercises 
 a most salutary influence on the child. As 
 for the case of a large family, it is well 
 known to every member of such a house- 
 hold that the amount of labor does not in- 
 crease pro rata; the younger children are 
 aided by the elder, and the spirit of pro- 
 tection and unselfishness thus engendered 
 is of much benefit to the young natures. 
 
 It is not the college education that you 
 give your son that will make him great, 
 although a college education is a good thing. 
 There are college-bred nonentities and ne'er 
 do weels as there are great men who knew 
 no teaching but that of the public school; 
 and the world is a good educator.
 
 MOTHERHOOD A JOY 99 
 
 Let the children understand, girls as well 
 as boys, that they will have to depend upon 
 their own exertions they will be all the 
 better for it. 
 
 Though this will not do everything for 
 her, the real emancipation of woman can 
 only be realized when she is financially in- 
 dependent; so long as women marry and 
 cling to men because they depend upon 
 them for a livelihood, so long will profli- 
 gates, drunkards and men of brutality be 
 allowed to hand on their licentiousness and 
 blackguardism to future generations. 
 
 A fit of anger in a mother has been known 
 to kill a nursing child; and there is no doubt 
 that the infant draws in with the mother's 
 milk tendencies, desires, traits that mould 
 its future life. It is with a profound disre- 
 gard of this fact, that a mother, in order 
 to attend social functions, or to give her- 
 self more time and freedom, hires another 
 woman to impress upon her child charac- 
 teristics and habits of which she knows 
 nothing, and which, did she know them, 
 would, very probably, fill her with horror. 
 I know of a large family whose degeneracy 
 can clearly be traced to the woman at whose 
 breast they were all nourished, a woman of
 
 IOO WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 brutal instincts, though kindly temper, of 
 fine physique but low moral standards. 
 
 The other alternative of the selfish mother, 
 or of the mother whose thoughts are right, 
 but whose physical condition is imperfect, 
 is the nursing-bottle. 
 
 Everyone knows that in case of an at- 
 tack of disease a bottle-fed baby has about 
 one-third the chance for life of a nursing 
 infant; this would seem to be argument 
 enough for a mother. 
 
 How a woman can convince herself that 
 any social enjoyment can compensate her 
 for the loss of the pleasure of nursing her 
 own child, is almost incomprehensible. 
 The little wandering mouth, the sweet, 
 impatient cry of expectation, the eager, 
 strenuous draining of the maternal fount, 
 the low, contented utterance, the sleep of 
 rosy satisfaction; these are sweets that it 
 is surely hard to forego, sweets of pure 
 delight which no triumphs that the outside 
 world offers can equal. 
 
 Knowledge, courage, love; these things 
 are needed if motherhood is to be truly a 
 joy; knowledge of what is meant by moth- 
 erhood, and of the needs and claims of 
 the child; courage to demand the right of
 
 MOTHERHOOD A JOY IOI 
 
 securing for her child the highest that is 
 possible in birth and environment; love, 
 that she may bear and faint not. 
 
 The trinity may not be separated; each 
 is dependent upon the other. The woman 
 who both knows and loves will be brave; 
 and she that hath courage, will both gain 
 and keep. 
 
 Let the women of the world be strong, 
 be wise, be loving, and the world will 
 throw open the doors of its empty jails 
 and asylums and proclaim an era of uni- 
 versal health, wealth and peace.
 
 A REAL PATERNITY 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 E shall be pretty safe in as- 
 suming that with soul and 
 body working in perfect har- 
 mony, we may trust with se- 
 curity to our natural instincts. 
 Then, to eat solely when we 
 are hungry, and to cease eating when we 
 are satisfied, to drink only when we are 
 thirsty, and in such manner that thirst would 
 be speedily quenched, would be as natural 
 as to draw breath. Body needs and mind 
 knowledge, soul desires and bodily expres- 
 sion : a perfect balance implies perfect action. 
 I see no reason for excluding from this 
 same rule the question of sexual needs. On 
 the one hand the strong physical craving, 
 urging possession and the expression of its 
 own vehemence; on the other, the as pow- 
 erful argument of the rights or wishes of 
 another. Harmony between the two will 
 give the natural and legitimate sexual life. 
 If, therefore, a child be started well, be 
 endowed with a fine physical organism, a
 
 A REAL PATERNITY 103 
 
 clear, healthy mind, and the courage that 
 is the glad offspring of both, he may be 
 may be left to nature without misgiving. 
 But how many children have such a her- 
 itage? Are they not often handicapped 
 by some deadly moral deformity, by an 
 inefficient body, or both? 
 
 Of all the duties that confront a young 
 man in the early years of his maturity, the 
 one least considered by him is that of 
 judicious fatherhood. He has diligently 
 studied his profession or business; he has 
 looked into every detail and considered 
 each with a due regard to its relative im- 
 portance; he has disciplined his mind to 
 follow in the direction called for by his 
 peculiar line of work; but preparation 
 for fatherhood, study or self-discipline with 
 respect to the ushering into the world of 
 a new being these are things to which he 
 is profoundly indifferent. 
 
 It is wholly a question of ignorance; it 
 is not conceivable that a man who realized 
 that he might, if he chose, make of his 
 child a great, wise man or woman, would 
 deliberately choose that it should be con- 
 stitutionally or morally imperfect. 
 
 As touched upon in previous chapters,
 
 104 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 the wise way would be to teach every boy 
 and girl the necessity of self-government 
 in the interests of the race. The story of 
 his powers and possibilities will not fall up- 
 on indifferent ears; and a grave word wise- 
 ly spoken to the impressionable and recep- 
 tive mind of a boy, may prove the pivot on 
 which his whole after-life shall turn. 
 
 It is surprising that in so important a mat- 
 ter as the making of a future nation, the 
 State has been satisfied to leave so much 
 to chance. It will not long be so. The 
 minds of men, awakened by the knowl- 
 edge of the scientist, will realize the 
 necessity for action; we shall have schools 
 of instruction for parenthood, as we have 
 schools for the other and surely less im- 
 portant sciences; and an intelligent pa- 
 ternity will be the foundation stone of a 
 grander, greater national edifice. 
 
 The question of initial heredity rests large- 
 ly with the man. He is charged to be care- 
 ful that his child be conceived at a time 
 when he is in good physical health, that 
 his mind be filled with images of beauty, 
 not permeated with the thought of personal 
 gratification. A feeling of strong passionate 
 devotion to his wife, and a desire for perfect
 
 A REAL PATERNITY 105 
 
 union, combined with the mental picture 
 of what their child should be is surely the 
 simple natural impulse; and could the union 
 be accomplished at a time when the hus- 
 band was engaged upon some work of beauty 
 or strength, some particular study upon 
 which his heart was set, he would undoubt- 
 edly convey to the child a strong intel- 
 lectual bias in favor of his own life-work. 
 This form of heredity is responsible for 
 much that has been naturally ascribed to 
 direct heredity; a child may inherit his fath- 
 er's tastes and intellectual predilections not 
 so much from the fact that the child's brain 
 resembles the father's, and that therefore 
 the talents are likely to be similar, but that 
 at the time of the child's conception, the 
 mind of the father was, necessarily, perme- 
 ated with thoughts of the work upon which 
 he was engaged. 
 
 A most interesting series of experiments 
 recently made by scientists, reveals the fact 
 that different passions produced different 
 effects upon the saliva and perspiration; 
 each separate passion, anger, jealousy etc., 
 by chemical analysis, and the comparison 
 of resultant color, being successfully named 
 by the experimentor. If these outward func-
 
 106 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 tions are so definitely and decidedly influ- 
 enced by an emotion, how much more 
 marked must it be the case with reproduc- 
 tion, the most delicate and essential function 
 in man, the focus of his nerves and nature? 
 
 A single standard of morality for men 
 and women, is the only reasonable and legi- 
 timate basis of ethics. So long as women 
 submit to unfair social regulations, and a 
 girl brings to her husband the first-fruits 
 of her maiden thought and innocence with- 
 out exacting or expecting the same gift from 
 him, so long will young men to whom con- 
 tinence is undoubtedly possible, give as ex- 
 cuse for their loose conduct, the worn-out 
 fable of a man's necessity. 
 
 Let us admit that the average man's pas- 
 sion is stronger than the average woman's, 
 that it is more difficult for him to resist 
 the importunities of sex impulses and emo- 
 tions. He has, at the same time, if he 
 chooses to exercise it, a stronger power of 
 self-mastery and a firmer will. While heart- 
 ily sympathizing with a boy's struggles a- 
 gainst the strange new temptations that 
 assail him from within his own being, and 
 realizing that these are temptations by which 
 a girl is less likely to be troubled, we yet
 
 A REAL PATERNITY 107 
 
 must believe that if a boy has had his po- 
 tential fatherhood wisely explained to him, 
 and the beauty of self-control, with its far 
 reaching consequences, definitely suggested, 
 he may with safety and in time with little 
 struggle keep himself as pure as she. When 
 the physicians of our land set themselves 
 to tell the truth to our young men instead 
 of the pleasant lies that have done duty in 
 the past; when they declare, as their con- 
 viction, that the sexual act is necessary for 
 generation only, and is not essential to health, 
 then we may hope for an era of clean living 
 and wise procreation. 
 
 A lad of seventeen or eighteen, whose 
 mother had instructed him wisely in sex 
 matters, visited a doctor in the city of New 
 York with a boy friend who desired 
 advice in some physical difficulty, and both 
 boys were surprised and dismayed when 
 the doctor suggested sexual intercourse as 
 remedy for the trouble. The former went 
 at once to his mother with the question: 
 "Mother, is all that you have taught me 
 wrong? Which is right, you or the doctor? 
 Surely a physician should know the needs 
 of the body better than anyone else, yet 
 he says this. What am I to think?" In
 
 108 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 order that the boy should not feel that there 
 was but one medical point of view, the 
 mother promptly sent him to a physician 
 who was not a materialist, nor one who 
 would carelessly prescribe an immoral act 
 lor physical ill ; who explained to the youth 
 the meaning of the former advice and its 
 error; who pointed out the excellence of 
 self-restraint and the physiological basis for 
 the statement that purity of mind and the 
 exercise of will-power, mean bodily health 
 as well as mental sanity. Had we more 
 such physicians, men of personal habits of 
 temperance and purity, of intellectual hon- 
 esty and moral probity, it would not be long 
 before the brothel would become the resort 
 only of the obviously depraved and intem- 
 perate, and scrofula and various syphilitic 
 disorders be no longer known in the fam- 
 ilies of the great and innocent. The immu- 
 table law that the sins of the fathers are 
 "visited upon the children unto the third 
 and fourth generation" is the most melan- 
 choly aspect of the whole situation; the 
 sight of perfectly pure men and women 
 incurably diseased or constitutionally en- 
 feebled as the result of ignorant or 
 careless self-indulgence on the part of a
 
 A REAL PATERNITY 109 
 
 parent or grandparent emphasizes in awful 
 intensity the words of the great teacher: 
 "No man liveth to himself and no man 
 dieth to himself." Many a young man's 
 prospects and happiness have been ruined 
 through the selfish recklessness of an an- 
 cestor now 'a bag of bones in a coffin.'"* 
 
 Personally I do not believe that any young 
 man of average intelligence, who had the 
 facts and possibilities put before him, would 
 deliberately or weakly run the risk of hand- 
 ing over to children and grandchildren dis- 
 ease, misery and premature death. It is a 
 knowledge of physiology that our young 
 men need, not religious dogma; a study 
 of heredity, not alone moral precepts. 
 
 The secret of the morality of a young 
 man's life lies with the attitude of the early 
 days of adolescence; as his thought is 
 shaped then so will his after-life be. If, 
 when the first sex impulses begin to stir 
 within him, he realizes their import, their 
 greatness and dignity, regards himself as a 
 treasure-house of possible future jewels; 
 knows that the finest and most manly thing 
 that he can do is to keep himself pure for 
 the woman whom he will one day honor 
 
 *See Dr. Conan Doyle's "Round the Red Lamp."
 
 IIO WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 above all others; he will be just as ready, 
 just as able to keep his innocence as the 
 girl-wife who is somewhere waiting for 
 him. The struggles and suffering that are 
 so often spoken of as incidental to a young 
 man's life, are generally unnecessary and 
 self-inflicted; are the result, in the majority 
 of cases, of roving, licentious thoughts, or 
 of a voluntary yielding to the lowest in his 
 nature ; they are not the result of natural sex- 
 importuning. If they were, where would 
 be the reason, the wisdom, or the justice 
 of the Creator's plan in this regard ? Con- 
 tinous tampering with a lighted fuse can- 
 not but result in a final explosion; a young 
 man cannot let his mind dwell on sexual 
 possibilities and then expect to escape the 
 pain of wrestling with definite temptation. 
 This alone is where the harm of physical 
 restraint would come in, and this is what 
 physicians mean when they advocate indul- 
 gence; it is not purity that harms, but un- 
 satisfied mental longings. And if it comes 
 to that, rather a thousand times let the body 
 sin and be done with it, than leave the mind 
 a ghastly prey to the wild beasts of unholy 
 and libidinous impulse, and preserve an out- 
 ward-seeming sanctity at the cost of mental 
 prostitution !
 
 A REAL PATERNITY III 
 
 Health is what we want, real saneness 
 and soundness in the young fathers of our 
 land, the purity that involves the most ex- 
 quisite sexual pleasure and satisfaction when 
 maturity and love call it forth; that will 
 mean to the object of devotion a continual 
 source of happiness; and, above all, that will 
 give to the blest outcome of such natural 
 embraces the fine courage, the tender sen- 
 sitiveness, the clear mentality, the noble 
 masterfulness that will make them the men 
 and women that the land and the world 
 craves. 
 
 There is a curious lack of responsibility 
 in the male character which alone can ex- 
 plain a man's recklessness in sexual matters. 
 Prompted by the wild caprice of the mo- 
 ment or inflamed by wine, a man will enter 
 a house of prostitution, and for the sake of 
 a few moments of animal pleasure, take the 
 chances of disease and death, a wife's ruined 
 constitution, and an infected posterity. A 
 species of insanity, surely; a boasted civil- 
 ization this of ours ; truly the brain of a sav- 
 age with its elemental instincts would be a 
 wiser and better guide. For what was a 
 man's mind given him? To be dulled and 
 besotted into looking for jewels in a dung
 
 112 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 heap ? To expect to find in the sordid em- 
 brace of a harlot that which can only come 
 as a passionate gift; to shut away the gra- 
 cious sunlight, and, grasping at the tallow 
 candle, wonder to find the hands foul and 
 the house in darkness? 
 
 Apart from the moral aspect of the affair, 
 there is absolutely no security in illicit re- 
 lationships: and there is, as I have said, the 
 most real retribution perpetually hanging, 
 like the Damoclean sword, over the head 
 of the man who has once laid his honor 
 in the hands of a prostitute. 
 
 A true story in this connection may point 
 the thought more definitely. 
 
 A young man and woman loving each 
 other intensely and devotedly, married, and 
 spent some ten or twelve happy months. 
 They were suited to each other as to tastes 
 and disposition, and the future promised well. 
 At last the baby came, and when she was 
 able to notice it carefully, the young mother 
 saw that something was wrong. When the 
 doctor came to pay his daily visit, she said; 
 "Doctor, what is the matter with my baby?" 
 The doctor did not immediately answer, but 
 at length he said : "There is something the 
 matter; I will tell you when your husband
 
 A REAL PATERNITY 113 
 
 comes in.'' The young father appeared pres- 
 ently, and the doctor gravely stated the 
 case. "The condition of your child is the 
 result of what is commonly known as a 
 youthful indiscretion on your part." The 
 man was indignant, and full of emphatic 
 abjurations. He had been "perfectly pure 
 for years; the thing was monstrous, impos- 
 sible!" 
 
 "I am perfectly prepared to believe you, 
 my lad,'' the doctor said, "You may have 
 been pure for five years, or ten years, or 
 twenty years, but at some time or other, 
 perhaps only on one occasion, you gave your 
 body to a passing pleasure," here the doctor 
 paused the man nodded assent, "with the 
 consequence that your child will never see." 
 
 Utterly shocked and horrified, the wife 
 would listen to no entreaties or explanations; 
 she left her home and refused to return. 
 A home broken up, a blind child, a life's 
 happiness gone; it was a big price to pay 
 for what he had had. A moment's fleeting 
 pleasure followed by the inevitable sense 
 of personal degradation; an hour of weak 
 sensuality; a commercial transaction con- 
 taining none of the satisfactions of acquisi- 
 tion, none of the sweets of possession.
 
 114 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 Although the definite effects of evil-do- 
 ing may not always come to light as in the 
 above case, they are, none the less, real 
 and lasting. Many a strong young wife has 
 become a permanent invalid as the result 
 of previous loose living on the part of her 
 husband; and the seeds of the most horrible 
 diseases have been passed on generation 
 after generation ruining the lives of hun- 
 dreds of men and women. Incurable and 
 deadly, it would seem that the risk of in- 
 fection alone would make this revolting dis- 
 order a thing impossible to all but the in- 
 curably debased and depraved. That it is 
 not so only goes to prove incomprehensible 
 ignorance and irresponsibility on the part of 
 the prospective fathers of the race. 
 
 It has been said by a well-known phys- 
 ician of the City of New York, that in his 
 medical experience, 50 per cent of the sterile 
 wives in his practice were so through no 
 fault of their own, but because of disease 
 contracted through and a result of previous 
 evil living of their husbands. 
 
 Charlotte Perkins Gilman in one of her 
 books suggests that if men could be per- 
 suaded to sow their wild oats in the autumn 
 instead of the spring of life, it would be
 
 A REAL PATERNITY 115 
 
 much better for posterity; then the resultant 
 evil would be upon their heads, and not 
 upon the race ! 
 
 To be perfectly just, we are not able to 
 exonerate the women of the land from com- 
 plicity in this evil. Our girls labor under 
 the delusion that a man is an invulnerable 
 thing; having had no wise instruction in 
 these matters from their delicate and lady- 
 like mothers, they judge of a youth's feel- 
 ings by their own, and recklessly, and un- 
 thinkingly lead him into temptation. Wom- 
 an's dress at the present day in its fashionable 
 form, is a perpetual menace to the virtue of 
 young men. A dress that cuts a woman's 
 form in two, that outlines and accentuates 
 the bust and hips, that affects concealment 
 and engenders curiosity, is not calculated 
 to aid a man in his desire to reverence 
 womanhood. 
 
 An opportunity to see something that is 
 forbidden, a prurient curiosity as to the in- 
 dividual proportions of a woman, especially 
 if she be young or beautiful; these are the 
 the things that, whether we expect them 
 or not are engendered by the artificial and 
 senseless mode of dressing affected by our 
 women.
 
 Il6 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 A short skirt, long gaiters, and a stout 
 pair of shoes for wet weather, with no at- 
 tempt at the gathering up of skirts, no sug- 
 gestion of concealment, and for street wear 
 in fair weather a modified edition of the 
 same costume, and we should have at least 
 one temptation the less to be laid to the 
 charge of women. The Princess robe is 
 always beautiful; it fulfils the requirements 
 of art and comfort; it has been experiment- 
 ed with and found to answer the needs of 
 street wear as well as being very beautiful 
 for home costumes. 
 
 When will women, looking to the good 
 of the race rather than to their own vanity, 
 actuated by a healthy sex-knowledge and 
 imbued with a real desire for mutual help 
 and advancement, refuse to submit to the 
 dictum of a senseless fashion, and to tie 
 up their bodies into an inane and unnatural 
 incapacity; determine to be free, to be true, 
 to be powerful? 
 
 When a girl bares her beautiful shoul- 
 ders for a ball she does not realize that the 
 sight of her loveliness will affect a man more 
 than the decollette dresses of her friends do 
 her; she would open her eyes wide with 
 horror if she knew that the suggestion of
 
 A REAL PATERNITY I 17 
 
 a rounded bosom would thrill him to his 
 inmost depths; would perhaps send him rest- 
 less and unsatisfied to find in the unholy 
 offerings of the street his escape from an 
 agony of desire. Not that he is in any way 
 justified; but where it lies with a woman 
 to help or to hinder, to uplift or to degrade, 
 surely there can be no question as to her 
 ultimate action. 
 
 There are women some of them pass as 
 good women who enter a ball-room out- 
 wardly beautiful but, in reality, birds of 
 prey. If their victims were only the men 
 who, gazing on the display of half-concealed 
 loveliness, allowed daring speeches and dar- 
 ing looks, are driven mad with passion, the 
 thing would be less hideous than it is. Our 
 butterfly smiles to herself as she leans back 
 in her carriage after the ball, smiles to think 
 how she has moved men, has, perhaps, seen 
 in their eyes a brightness that can have but 
 one meaning, and yet has given nothing. 
 Given nothing! 
 
 Thoughtless, selfish, criminal woman, she 
 has sold those of her own sex, she has fed 
 her vanity on the youth and purity of her 
 weaker sisters; for the man she left is no 
 longer responsible for his actions. With
 
 Il8 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 her witcheries and allurements, her entice- 
 ments and denials, she has sent him forth 
 a ravening, thirsting creature, and, before 
 the dawn of a new day, there will be two 
 more sins, ugly, vulgar, hateful sins, for 
 which a delicately -nurtured over-refined 
 woman is undoubtedly responsible. 
 
 This question of woman's dress is a seri- 
 ous one, as every thinking man knows; I am 
 not sure that the Chinese women, dressed 
 in precisely the same costumes as their hus- 
 bands, perfectly modest in their loose bi- 
 furcated garments and their long tunics, 
 are not near the ideal in dress; if not ideal, 
 artistically, certainly ideal in the matter of 
 the sex-needs of the race. 
 
 In the question of handing on to posterity 
 a pure, high mental attitude in matters 
 sexual one of the serious difficulties is the 
 low standard of conversation prevailing a- 
 mong men of even a cultured type. Ob- 
 scene jests, and funny stories wherein the 
 loose conduct of women plays an impor- 
 tant part, tales of light love, innuendo and 
 double entendre; these and such as these 
 shock the sensitiveness and chivalry of the 
 young lad; after a time he becomes accus- 
 tomed to them, and finally, the mind which
 
 A REAL PATERNITY 119 
 
 once contained a high ideal of womanhood 
 is degraded into contemplating seduction, 
 infidelity and prostitution without tremor. I 
 am persuaded that nine-tenths of the moral 
 torpidity of the average man is due to the 
 licentious conversation which he hears a- 
 bout him and in which he indulges. 
 
 The ideals of many men with regard to 
 sex-relationships are curious and interesting. 
 There is one class which holds as innocent 
 all intercourse which is purely commer- 
 cial; he has certain needs, he satisfies them 
 and pays for it, and the incident is closed; 
 it has no moral significance. But to seek 
 sexual satisfaction in his own rank of life 
 would be a social crime, and indefensible. 
 
 Another class holds an opposite view, that 
 association with a prostitute is vulgar and 
 unworthy of a gentleman, but that intimate 
 relationship with a woman in his own sta- 
 tion, any favors conceded by a friend, are 
 legitimate and honorable. 
 
 Both hold one highly virtuous position; 
 the seduction of a virgin is impossible to a 
 decent man! But after someone else has 
 done the betraying, after a girl has made 
 one misstep, then there is no reason why 
 she should not be legitimate prey; a girl
 
 I2O WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 once violated has no longer any claim up- 
 on their chivalry, makes no appeal to their 
 tenderness or generosity. 
 
 Whether smoking is necessary to a man 
 if he has not made himself a slave to the 
 habit is a question that is easily answered ; 
 and we do not need the opinions of physi- 
 cians to convince us that there is no smoker 
 who would not be healthier or more of a 
 man if he were not one. What is the first 
 thing a physician orders when a sick man 
 goes to consult him? In nine cases out of 
 ten, no matter what the ailment may be, 
 he says "knock off smoking." Through the 
 wide-spread character of this habit, and the 
 fact that many are themselves slaves to it, 
 most physicians are afraid or ashamed open- 
 ly to say what they know in this regard; 
 that the nicotine absorbed into a man's 
 system, a poison so virulent that a drop will 
 kill a dog, not only is often the cause of 
 degeneracy in offspring, but has a weaken- 
 ing and demoralizing influence upon the 
 wife as the result of physical union. 
 
 Of the evil of continuous tippling 
 it is hardly necessary to speak; its hurt- 
 ful influence and its far-reaching results 
 are but too well known. Men meet after a
 
 A REAL PATERNITY 121 
 
 short absence and they must visit a saloon 
 and drink together; they wish to discuss a 
 business proposition and they must have a 
 cocktail to assist in their deliberations; a 
 piece of good luck comes their way, and 
 they must celebrate it in champagne; they 
 are in hard luck and must cheer themselves 
 up with whiskey. There is always a good 
 excuse. 
 
 I am not a temperance crank, but when 
 I see the childish and absurd behavior of 
 full-grown men in this regard I am filled 
 with genuine amazement. 
 
 An inherited taste for alcoholic stimulants 
 is one of the strongest enemies a young boy 
 can have to fight; and the nursing mother, 
 often in utter ignorance of the harm she 
 may be doing, helps on the work of the 
 foe by "building herself up" with malt 
 liquors and solacing herself with brandy egg- 
 nogs. 
 
 The question of drinking and smoking 
 fathers for the children of tomorrow is in 
 the hands of the young women of today. 
 It is certainly unjust to scold and nag a 
 husband for bad habits which have been 
 condoned before marriage, even supposing 
 that such a course of action would be pro-
 
 122 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 ductive of good results. When the young 
 men of the day know that the best and 
 most desirable girls will not tolerate habits 
 of smoking or drinking and that to be a slave 
 to either makes them objects of contempt- 
 uous pity, then and not till then will slavery 
 to tobacco go out of fashion and tippling 
 at all hours of the day become a thing of 
 the past. 
 
 It would seem reasonable to suppose that 
 all things supplied by Nature are for our 
 occasional enjoyment if so we choose to 
 use them: there are many products besides 
 tobacco that might be employed at inter- 
 vals without serious harm, but which when 
 partaken of daily or hourly are a menace 
 to health. 
 
 If temperance in these various indulgences 
 could be exercised we should have little 
 quarrel with them; but as that seems im- 
 possible we are perforce driven to whole- 
 sale condemnation. 
 
 Many a husband, through carelessness, 
 makes the grave mistake of soiling his wife's 
 mind by a repetition to her of the unclean 
 anecdotes which he has heard outside. A 
 man, in his rough-and-tumble life, may, 
 perhaps, in maturity at least, be able to hear
 
 A REAL PATERNITY 123 
 
 these things if not with impunity, at least 
 without serious harm to his moral nature; 
 but grossness and libidinous thought are so 
 opposed to the gracious, sensitive serenity 
 of the feminine mind that it is impossible 
 for her to listen uncontaminated. A man 
 who tampers in this way with the innocence 
 and integrity of his wife must accept future 
 unchasteness and infidelity on her part as 
 his just recompense. 
 
 A man cannot transmit to his offspring 
 what he has not in himself. Principles of 
 truth, honor, purity, robustness of thought, 
 these are the heritage for which his unborn 
 posterity cry out to him. Let him see to 
 it that the appealing eyes of his little child- 
 ren are not filled with a dumb reproof.
 
 THE PERFECT BODY 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 NE sees a strong, massive, 
 gem-encrusted box, a thing 
 evidently formed for safety 
 and designed in beauty; care- 
 fully prepared, an excellently 
 devised receptacle; the 
 thought which follows the look of admir- 
 ation is what does it contain? We scarcely 
 need to speculate on the value of the con- 
 tents; that so much thought and care have 
 been expended on the case which protects 
 it proves it to be something precious. To 
 conceive of the box as a mere ornament, 
 an empty thing framed only to please the 
 eye would be an insult to both owner and 
 maker. To what end the clever workman- 
 ship, the beauty of shape, the signs of del- 
 icate thought and manipulation? We real- 
 ize that, could we but look inside, we would 
 know. Within is a wondrous shining jewel, 
 a thing so great, so rare, that the fairest of 
 caskets is not worthy to contain it.
 
 THE PERFECT BODY 125 
 
 Each one of us owns a jewel, and with 
 each it is the spark emanating from the 
 Eternal, the thing without which we are 
 not, the living spirit which stamps our in- 
 dividuality, which shows our Divine origin. 
 Some of the jewels are dim and lustreless; 
 we can leave them to become tarnished 
 and damp, dull and dingy, or we can care 
 for them and guard them, each his own 
 jewel, tenderly and untiringly till the 
 thoughtful looker-on says: "Surely from 
 the brightness and beauty of this glittering 
 spark I can begin to conceive of the grand- 
 eur of the parent jewel." The question of 
 the outer covering of this precious thing, 
 is it a matter of indifference? Surely I 
 would think not ! A flimsy, ill-made box 
 would be a poor casket for a precious gem. 
 
 Though useful for purposes of illustra- 
 tion our simile is inadequate; in its earth- 
 sojourn the spirit has such an intimate re- 
 lation with the body, through the mind, 
 which according as it is used, is the in- 
 strument of either, that no word-picture can 
 present a suitable counterpart. 
 
 In considering the treatment of the body 
 we are in danger of falling into one or 
 other of two pitfalls; on the one hand an
 
 126 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 elevation of the physical into a position 
 which it is not intended to occupy, a think- 
 ing of the body as of the real individual, 
 instead of as merely the clothing, the outer 
 covering of the self which is within; or, on 
 the other hand, a disregard of the physical 
 man and a neglect of its proper needs as 
 if the exaltation of the body were a disres- 
 pect to that in us which is greater. 
 
 That a middle course is the only prac- 
 tical one for every-day use is apparent; at 
 the same time we cannot but realize that 
 where a great, exceptional, altruistic work 
 is to be performed denial of even the or- 
 dinary demands of the body is sometimes 
 essential. We have but to glance at the life 
 of Jesus to see that he realized this fully. 
 He did not find fault with the wedding, or 
 the feasting of his friends; but for himself, 
 as the periods of high action and self-sac- 
 rifice approached, the time when he would 
 be called upon to bear, to exhort, to lead, 
 he deemed it necessary to fortify the soul 
 by the rigorous denial of the body. 
 
 So much being granted, and in the knowl- 
 edge that the ordinary routine of life would 
 call for normal, sustainable action, we look 
 to a perfect middle course as the most prac-
 
 THE PERFECT BODY 127 
 
 tical. The writer will never forget the com- 
 plete revolution of all her ideas on the sub- 
 ject effected by the first reading of Brown- 
 ing's "Rabbi Ben Ezra.'' Previous ideas had, 
 as a matter of course, been inherited and 
 educated ones; that they had not been in- 
 tuitional was clearly proven in the moment 
 when Browning's clear, sane thought flashed, 
 like a ray of sunlight, over the unexplored 
 forest of a girl's inner life ; gave her a new 
 and wonderful conception of the uses of 
 the flesh. 
 
 Let us not always say 
 
 "Spite of this flesh today 
 I strove, made head, gained ground upon 
 the whole!" 
 
 As the bird wings and sings, 
 
 Let us cry "all good things 
 Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, 
 than flesh helps soul!" 
 
 Then welcome each rebuff, 
 
 That turns earth's smoothness rough, 
 Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go! 
 
 Be our joy three parts pain! 
 
 Strive, and hold cheap the strain; 
 Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never 
 grudge the throe.
 
 128 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 Then shall I pass, approved 
 A man for aye removed 
 From the developed brute; a God though 
 in the germ." 
 
 Then "Saul"; the two poems constituted 
 a new revelation, and changed the whole 
 aspect of life. 
 
 The requisite for bodily perfection, as the 
 requisite of any perfection, is harmony. The 
 higher self and the bodily expression must 
 be in accord. Let there be strife between 
 them and a jarring note is struck, and until 
 there is an attuning there can be no real 
 beauty. 
 
 It has been said, and with some justice, 
 that we must be masters of our bodies, 
 not slaves to them. While in effect this is 
 true, for we realize fully that a man's higher 
 nature is enslaved as soon as he feels 
 bound to any bodily habit; that to be free 
 he must be able, at will, to take a pleasure 
 or to leave it, to be happy in the indulg- 
 ence, or in the abstinence; we cannot but 
 feel that the terms "master" and "slave" 
 do not give the highest, fullest expression 
 of the idea. Harmony, not mastery is our 
 thought; it was this idea that filled Brown- 
 ing's mind when he said:
 
 THE PERFECT BODY 129 
 
 "Thy body at its best 
 How far can that project thy soul on its 
 
 lone way?" 
 and: 
 
 "Nor soul helps flesh more now than flesh 
 helps soul." 
 
 The soul advising the body, the body sup- 
 porting the soul, this surely is the highest 
 ideal. 
 
 Neglect of the mind and soul develop- 
 ment will, in the end, make of the body a 
 coarse, unlovely thing, a chromo of a great 
 painting, a plaster-of-paris figure smeared 
 with daubs of color as compared with Phid- 
 ian outlines and workmanship. On the other 
 hand, neglect of the body results in disease, 
 deformity, and impotence, which re-act as 
 surely upon mind and soul. Let us once 
 have it firmly fixed in the mind that this 
 body of ours is to be developed, not disre- 
 garded, cultivated, not emasculated, and we 
 shall take a more healthy interest in it and 
 in its functions. 
 
 How are we to cultivate a perfect body? 
 Allowing that it is in its proper place in re- 
 lation to the mind, under normal conditions, 
 its adequate development is a simple thing 
 and one that lies in our own hands. A large
 
 130 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 amount of physical exercise is absolutely 
 essential. Long walks, not saunterings in 
 frbnt of shop windows, or in hot shops, not 
 a languishing promenade, but a quick brisk 
 energetic motion, the speed not less than a 
 mile in twenty minutes. The step should 
 be elastic, the body erect, and the chest well 
 elevated. 
 
 The complaints of round shoulders, hol- 
 low chests, doubts as to whether the breath- 
 ing is correct would be all done away with 
 if people would keep in mind the elevation 
 of the chest. Never mind the shoulders, 
 never mind the abdomen, raise the chest and 
 the other parts of the body will fall naturally 
 into position. We do not need to trouble 
 about the breathing as to whether it be ab- 
 dominal or from the chest; to raise the chest 
 as one breathes will insure the breath being 
 properly drawn. We do not breathe half 
 enough for health; voluntary breathing 
 should be as much a part of our daily duties 
 as our bathing or brushing. Twice a day 
 one should stand in a place where the best 
 air is procurable and expelling from the 
 lungs all that it contains, should draw in 
 (through the nostrils, not the mouth) full, 
 deep inspirations. The breath should be held 
 while one could count twenty and then ex-
 
 THE PERFECT BODY 131 
 
 polled through the lips. This should be re- 
 peated at will after the first few days when 
 the dizziness consequent upon the new effort 
 has worn away; it is of no use to try to do 
 too much at first. In walking, it is of great 
 use to draw deep inspirations, and if by the 
 seashore, or on the mountains, such exercise 
 will be wonderfully invigorating. People 
 talk a great deal about "good air" and "bad 
 air," of needing "change of air," of the "fine 
 air" of this or that locality. As a matter 
 of fact the finest air procurable is wasted 
 upon the individual who does not know how 
 properly to use it. It is better to live in 
 bad air and to breathe it vigorously ,and vol- 
 untarily than to live in the most invigorating 
 atmosphere with "lazy lungs.'' This sounds 
 radical, but the statement will, I think, be 
 borne out by the testimony of any specialist 
 in lung diseases. 
 
 The head should be held erect and grand- 
 ly in walking, with the feeling that in us are 
 infinite possibilities; a feeling that we own 
 the world, as indeed we do, if we look up- 
 on it rightly. We need not expect good 
 to result from our exercise if we are har- 
 boring unhappy, fearful, or angry thoughts. 
 If any such are with us when we start, we 
 must cast them to the winds as we go. This
 
 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 is an interesting point, as illustrative of the 
 interdependence of soul and body. Let one 
 try to act without or in disagreement with 
 the other and the result can only be a disson- 
 ance from which both must suffer. We can- 
 not enter at any great length into the ques- 
 tion of the different methods of physical 
 exercise. Over-exertion, while hurtful to 
 all, is particularly injurious to women, with 
 whom the delicate organs of reproduction 
 require a special care. To lift heavy weights 
 is a species of physical foolishness; no wo- 
 man who values the proper condition of the 
 internal organs will subject them to so se- 
 vere a strain. Not that a woman must of 
 necessity be frail because she is a woman ; 
 within reasonable limits she is as strong as 
 her brother, and were we living in a state 
 of hygienic, though unrefined, savagery, we 
 should not have to consider her physical 
 comfort more than his. A sedentary life, 
 improper food, absurd and unsuitable dress, 
 have contributed to make the average girl 
 unfitted for strenuous labor either physical 
 or mental; and until we return to the state 
 of nature that our physical bodies need, we 
 shall have to be contented with delicate 
 women and impoverished offspring. But, in 
 Heaven's name, let us do the best we can.
 
 THE PERFECT BODY 133 
 
 Let us give the girl the same consideration 
 in the matter of physical exercise as the boy. 
 The same mental effort is required of her 
 in school, let us give her the necessary phys- 
 ical balance, a reasonable outlet for her often 
 overtaxed brain and overwrought imagina- 
 tion. 
 
 There is no inherent mental difference be- 
 tween the sexes; there is, therefore, no real 
 reason for educating the boy and girl dif- 
 ferently. We feed the girl according to our 
 present public school system on the same 
 mental pabulum and expect equally good 
 results; the same should be true of physical 
 powers. It is scarcely necessary to explain 
 that we do not advocate sending a delicate- 
 ly-nurtured girl-child to play foot-ball with 
 boys. Foot-ball is a brutal game at best, and 
 the results claimed for it would not seem 
 to justify its existence. On the other hand, 
 if our girls were brought up from baby- 
 hood as are our boys, were allowed to climb, 
 and jump, and run, as boys are encouraged 
 to do, there would be no so-called boys' 
 sport that is truly beneficial in which she 
 might not indulge with much resultant good 
 to herself and to the race. 
 
 For summer exercise there is nothing so 
 beneficial as swimming, it broadens the
 
 134 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 chest, strengthens the muscles of the entire 
 body, vitalizes the nervous system, teaches 
 courage and self-reliance. Girls should be 
 taught to swim as soon as they have over- 
 come their first timidity in the water; a brave 
 child should swim well at ten years of age. 
 It is hardly necessary to warn mothers that 
 there should be no forcing in the matter; 
 a nervous child should be judiciously and 
 gradually taught, and no lessons should be 
 given, in such a case, in any but shallow 
 and quiet water. The writer, at eleven years 
 of age, having been shown the required 
 positions and strokes, was lowered from 
 a pier at high tide and left to shift for her- 
 self; it took about twenty seconds to teach 
 her to swim, under these circumstances. 
 This method is not recommended, however, 
 unless the child is fearless, and robust, and 
 has a healthy pride in her physical prowess. 
 
 In providing for our physical perfection 
 Nature did not contemplate a sedentary life ; 
 we must have outdoor air, and plenty of it, 
 day and night, if we are to be well. 
 
 Why are so many people afraid of air? 
 One of the greatest foes to the peace of 
 mind of men and women is a mentally- 
 constructed bogie of the most harmless
 
 THE PERFECT BODY 135 
 
 description; I refer to "draughts."' God's 
 fresh air, a thing that never yet harmed any- 
 body. The statement can be made without 
 fear of criticism that no amount of fresh 
 air ever hurt anybody who was in a perfectly 
 healthy condition. 
 
 If the body is in an unhealthy condition 
 let us make it healthy, not shut away from 
 ourselves the greatest giver of health. What 
 is done with consumptive patients now- 
 a-days? They are kept in the open air all 
 day, rain or shine. Are we willing to wait 
 to be consumptive before we take advan- 
 tage of the beneficent qualities of the air 
 that is all about us waiting to be used? 
 Why is it that so many bedroom windows 
 are closed at night, and the occupants com- 
 plain of feverish dreams, chills, and head- 
 ache, and pity themselves as victims of 
 some sad dispensation of Providence? The 
 merest child who is adequately taught can 
 tell us that the carbonic acid gas emanating 
 from the lungs is deadly poison; and yet 
 otherwise sensible people will sleep night 
 after night breathing over and over again 
 vitiated and poisonous air, with all the pure 
 outside ozone waiting to pour itself in, and 
 cleanse and purify and vivify the atmos- 
 phere.
 
 136 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 One reason for the "colds" which are the 
 excuse for this baleful and unnecessary fear 
 of draughts is the excessive amount of cloth- 
 ing worn by both men and women. In win- 
 ter our houses are heated to summer tem- 
 perature; we think it necessary, however, 
 to cover ourselves with flannel from neck 
 to ankle; our all-wool underwear is a part 
 of our religion from November till May. 
 
 What is the consequence? We become 
 morbidly sensitive to the outside cold; the 
 body perspires, and the wool retains the 
 moisture; we take cold and blame anything 
 except the all-wool garment which is re- 
 sponsible. 
 
 If a women subject to colds in the winter 
 will wear the same undergarments at that 
 season that she does in the summer, putting 
 on a warm coat when she goes out, and 
 bloomers if she thinks it necessary, she will 
 not, unless, indeed, she overeats, or com- 
 mits similar acts of folly be troubled by 
 "colds." 
 
 The body needs the air, and needs it just 
 as close to it as possible. 
 
 If there is one part of the body that is 
 weak or poorly developed that is the part 
 requiring most attention. The temptation
 
 THE PERFECT BODY 137 
 
 to a boy is to develop his muscles at the 
 expense of grace and even of health; the 
 muscle-bound pugilist is not a beautiful 
 thing, yet the average boy has, in the matter 
 of development, some such example before 
 him. Wise advice on this point, as on all 
 points pertaining to the education of a child, 
 devolves upon the parent, who, it is taken 
 for granted, has made himself familiar with 
 the necessary detail. 
 
 It is essential that children be taught by 
 early example the importance of the daily 
 bath. It is astonishing to note in how many 
 homes the bath is overlooked or deemed un- 
 necessary except at weekly intervals. 
 
 The writer is acquainted with a wealthy 
 and refined mother in New York City, whose 
 son of thirteen goes from Saturday to Sat- 
 urday without any washing except a dab at 
 the face and a hasty rinsing of the hands. 
 And the interval has been known to length- 
 en to two and even to three weeks and the 
 boy remain unwashed. 
 
 Children are careless in these matters, and 
 need supervision, but the unbathed condi- 
 tion is not confined to children. Many ap- 
 parently fastidious women seem utterly un- 
 conscious of their error in the matter of the
 
 138 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 neglect of the daily bath, and handsome 
 gowns often cover a neglected skin. 
 
 No man or woman can be wholesome, 
 sweet and cleanly who does not bathe the 
 entire surface of the body once in twenty- 
 four hours. Distrust the cleanliness of the 
 person who is redolent of perfume; in oc- 
 casional instances it may indicate simply a 
 barbaric love of scents, but in the majority 
 of cases it is evidence of a consciousness 
 of lack of personal sweetness. Were the 
 writer a power in the legislature she would 
 use hei efforts to make a persistently un- 
 cleanly body and a foul breath sufficient 
 grounds for divorce. Both these disgusting 
 conditions being entirely unnecessary and 
 the result of unpardonable negligence should 
 be in this way discountenanced and disal- 
 lowed by a health-loving and understand- 
 ing Society. 
 
 The sexually normal and wholesomely- 
 kept body gives forth a sweet and subtle 
 fragrance, a delicate odor peculiar to the 
 individual and delightful to the lover. No 
 sensitive and appreciative lover of beauty 
 will be foolish enough to destroy this charm- 
 ing personal perfume by the use of any 
 foreign odor, however sweet.
 
 THE PERFECT BODY 139 
 
 A tablespoon ful of aromatic vinegar or 
 some similar tonic used in the bath is re- 
 freshing after a journey; and a delicately 
 scented sachet among the gloves or hand- 
 kerchiefs is not to be interdicted, if desired; 
 but the use of strong scents upon the per- 
 son or the gown, and the habit of sewing 
 sachet-bags inside the dress is forbidden not 
 only by good taste but by a knowledge of 
 what is due to the natural beauty and sweet- 
 ness of the human body. 
 
 The practice of wearing corsets is harm- 
 ful and unnecessary; Nature never con- 
 templated any such constriction of the most 
 important part of a woman's body; and Art, 
 in all ages and climes, has shown the fallacy 
 of the contention that a small waist is a 
 beautiful thing; it maybe that when woman 
 finds that her natural figure is as satisfact- 
 ory to her as to the God who made it, and 
 she has enough backbone of her own with- 
 out depending upon artificial support the 
 day of her mental and political emancipa- 
 tion will speedily dawn. 
 
 In the interests of .health I would that 
 men would for a certain length of time tie 
 themselves into corsets such as are worn 
 by sisters and wives. How fit these men
 
 140 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 would find themselves to perform their or- 
 dinary tasks one can easily imagine! How 
 sweet their tempers, and how happy and 
 cheerful their dispositions one could pro- 
 nounce upon with tolerable iaccuracy. It 
 may be urged that woman's duties are dif- 
 ferent. What about the stenographers, the 
 typewriters, the book-keepers, the telegraph- 
 ers, the saleswomen? And there is perhaps 
 less resultant evil from confinement and re- 
 striction of the body in these methods of 
 employment than in the case of domestic 
 work. It would be far less harmful to a man 
 to tie himself up in a tight corset or to top- 
 ple about on high-heeled shoes than it is 
 for a woman. He would not, of course, 
 make himself ridiculous in this manner; I 
 would to Heaven he would, for a space, 
 if, by so doing, and through his efforts, it 
 would leave free and unconstrained the deli- 
 cate, wonderful reproductive organs of the 
 mothers and future mothers of the race! 
 There is yet to be advanced one good, 
 physiological or social reason for wearing 
 a corset. Of course no woman will ever 
 admit that her corset is tight; she will draw 
 herself in and let you put your hand be- 
 tween her corset and her body to prove
 
 THE PERFECT BODY 14! 
 
 your accusation is false; but who has ever 
 found one woman who would or could in- 
 flate her lungs to their fullest extent in a 
 corset? If the custom were a beautiful one it 
 might be understood, but there is no model 
 of beauty either ancient or modern whose 
 lines approach those of the fashion-plate 
 woman. When will women be great enough 
 to despise the senseless dictum of an idle 
 plutocracy, and live a life close to nature? 
 It is possible to forego corsets and yet 
 not look like "a bag tied round in the middle'' 
 as one woman expressed it. The dividing 
 line of the waist is an inartistic thing at the 
 best; women are not made in two pieces 
 and it is not worth while to simulate such 
 an extravagance of mechanism. 
 
 It is contended that the fat that accumu- 
 lates about the waist in advancing years 
 renders a corset necessary, and we must ad- 
 mit that the result of an immediate change 
 to an uncorseted figure would mean in many 
 cases an offence to the artistic eye. Our 
 assertion is, however, that flabbiness of the 
 muscles is the inevitable result of their un- 
 used condition; if the body were left free 
 and the waist-muscles exercised daily there 
 would no fatty deposit. to be complained of.
 
 142 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 It goes without saying that insufficient ex- 
 ercise and over-feeding will produce un- 
 beautiful results in excessive adipose tissue. 
 No woman who cares for her beauty will 
 sin against Nature in this manner. 
 
 Take away the corsets, the pads and fal- 
 sities and women will live rationally for 
 very pride. 
 
 The nervous tissues of the body need a 
 generous and continuous supply of oxygen- 
 ated blood to successfully perform their 
 work; they form carbonic acid and this is 
 only removed by the venous blood which 
 carries it to the lungs for purification. Tight 
 lacing interferes with and prevents the re- 
 turn of the venous blood from the lower 
 limbs and the abdomen, and the result is 
 easily seen. Through corset-wearing the ab- 
 dominal organs are pressed downward and 
 falling of the womb is the consequence; 
 the liver is compressed, the lungs are not 
 given free play, and the health is thus grad- 
 ually deteriorated by imperfect aeration of 
 the blood. Were this simply a feminine 
 folly, we might pass it by, it is more; it 
 strikes at the vitality and health of the race. 
 
 To the constricting corset may be due 
 much of the unnecessary suffering which
 
 THE PERFECT BODY 143 
 
 is usual with our highly-strung nervous 
 women during the menstrual period. It is 
 regrettable that as the race becomes more 
 delicately organized our women become 
 more and more troubled through what was 
 not intended by Nature to be painful or un- 
 comfortable. By observing the healthy peas- 
 ant women of various countries, and learning 
 from them that this condition requires no 
 change in the clothing or alteration in the 
 habits, we find that it is only with our over- 
 civilized selves that menstruation is an im- 
 portant occurrance. Nature evidently in- 
 tended the periodic change as simply an 
 indication of a condition, as is the case with 
 the lower animals. To our cost we know 
 that in the American home the female 
 members of it suffer more or less intensely 
 for several days, and the duration of the 
 condition is from four to seven days, with 
 excessive flowing. I cannot but believe that 
 this deplorable condition is in a measure 
 due to the unfounded fears of ignorant pub- 
 erty and to the false suggestions given our 
 girls when they first bud into womanhood. 
 The condition itself is given too much prom- 
 inence in the mind of the child, while too 
 little stress is laid upon its purpose and
 
 144 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 prophecy. If the condition be regarded, as, 
 unfortunately, it is by most women, as a 
 tiresome, unpleasant and painful dispensa- 
 tion of Providence, its occurrance is likely 
 to bring with it the pain and discomfort that 
 such expectations engender. If it be pre- 
 sented to the child as the indication of her 
 capacity for motherhood, as showing that 
 the bud of child life is now preparing to 
 burst into the blossom of womanhood, that 
 her life now means more, holds more, prom- 
 ises more; that the beautiful power of ma- 
 ternity is latent there and will make her 
 able to understand more clearly our own 
 brooding care for her as the offspring of 
 our own body; if thoughts like these were 
 given a girl from the beginning it would 
 have a very definite effect upon menstrual 
 conditions. There are also many old-wives' 
 tales and legends, utterly without founda- 
 tion in scientific fact, which sow seeds of 
 fear in the girl's mind and serve to destroy 
 her comfort. 
 
 For example, there is a widely-received 
 fiction that a bath at this time would be 
 perilous to the health. Nothing is further 
 from the truth. For obvious reasons, a very 
 hot or very cold bath would be inadvisable,
 
 THE PERFECT BODY 145 
 
 being stimulating or too much of a shock; 
 but a tepid bath at such a time not only 
 will do no harm but will be found most 
 beneficial. If the body should crave a warm 
 bath there is no reason why it should not 
 be enjoyed. 
 
 Nature never intended the prolongation 
 of the condition that obtains today among 
 our delicately -reared women; three or 
 four days should be the limit of its con- 
 tinuance ; it is pitiable that so many of our 
 young women should lose one week out of 
 every four for all pleasurable and happy 
 purposes. 
 
 Without doubt, overstrain during the ado- 
 lescent period is largely responsible for this 
 unsatisfactory condition. When a girl first 
 shows indication of approaching woman- 
 hood she is usually just entering high-school. 
 She is ambitious to excel in school work 
 and her mother is ambitious for her. Just 
 at a time when she needs more out-door 
 exercise she has less, when she needs more 
 sleep she is sitting up late studying her more 
 difficult lessons; when she needs healthy 
 romance she is, in many cases, allowed to 
 read sensational literature when she has a 
 spare half-hour from her studies, or to at-
 
 146 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 tend equally disturbing and unwholesome 
 plays. It is altogether inexplicable on any 
 assumption save that of absolute careless- 
 ness or ignorance on the part of parents 
 that young impressionable girls should be 
 allowed to witness the unreal and undesir- 
 able representations of life to which they 
 flock on Saturday afternoons. One has only 
 to select the most objectionable play that 
 is appearing and stand outside the theatre 
 at a little before two o'clock on Saturday 
 afternoon to realize that unprotected girl- 
 hood is not confined to the slums of our 
 cities. 
 
 Ambitious mothers and brilliant daught- 
 ers combine to harm the sensitive body 
 with its delicate nerve-centres and its highly- 
 organized emotions. The expectation of an 
 early graduation spurs the girl on to further 
 effort and her strength is over-taxed before 
 she is aware of it. What matter, O foolish 
 mother, whether your girl graduates at sev- 
 enteen or at twenty? It makes little dif- 
 ference whether the coveted diploma is 
 gained in one year or another in a year or 
 two no one will be the wiser, but it will 
 matter to her all her life long if, at a mar- 
 riageable age, she is pallid, nervous and
 
 THE PERFECT BODY 147 
 
 ansemic. The school curriculum should be 
 planned for the child, not the child for the 
 curriculum; and as soon as parents realize 
 and protest against the over-study in the 
 high-school which is so lamentable an ac- 
 companiment of our present school system 
 so soon will the needed reform be insti- 
 tuted. Our children's education is a means 
 to an end, and that end, so far as our girls 
 are concerned, is that they shall be healthy, 
 sensible, intelligent women, ready to take 
 their part, if need be, among the workers 
 of the world, or, better still, to be wise wives 
 and clever mothers, with a good sound men- 
 tal training to beautify and perfect a strong, 
 sweet, capable body. 
 
 One would suppose that although women 
 might, from a vain notion of the require- 
 ments of beauty, disfigure their waists in 
 early youth, they would discard the thing 
 that restricted and oppressed when the 
 duty of maternity confronted them. So far 
 from this being the case, a large number 
 of women, with a false modesty that does 
 little credit either to their good sense or 
 their early training, endeavor to conceal the 
 fact of their condition through the valued 
 agency of the corset. It would seem that
 
 148 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 the most elementary ideas of physiology 
 would suggest allowing Nature all the space 
 possible in which to perform her exquisite 
 and delicate task; and we can only hope 
 that with the new knowledge that is com- 
 ing to us of the infinite possibilities of the 
 future race, the eyes of our women may be 
 opened to see their duty in this as in other 
 important matters. 
 
 A pretty and graceful woman, an accom- 
 plished vocalist, married a musician, a charm- 
 ing man and an inspired genius. Their life 
 together bid fair to be an ideal one; they 
 had youth, health, love, a community of in- 
 terests, all that is needed to make life beau- 
 tiful. Ten or twelve months after their 
 marriage I met the wife at a concert. A 
 
 friend said: "Do you know that Mrs. 
 
 is going to have a baby very soon ?" "Surely 
 not" I said : "look at her figure." "It is so, 
 I am sure," returned the friend; "her sister 
 told me; but she doesn't want people to 
 know it." I turned away impatiently. A 
 few weeks later we heard the news of a 
 double death, the mother and the still-born 
 child; a death entirely due, the attending 
 physician said, to the tight-lacing of the 
 mother.
 
 THE PERFECT BODY 149 
 
 A life of rare expectation cut short at 
 the age of twenty-five! 
 
 The artist husband, within a few years, 
 married a woman with, perhaps, fewer gifts, 
 but more common-sense; and they are at 
 present enjoying life surrounded by a happy 
 young family. This last act in the story is 
 given not with any desire to exult over the 
 inconstancy of a man, but in the hope that 
 the bare, brutal fact may prevent similar 
 stupidity on the part of some other young 
 woman. 
 
 This woman deliberately threw away her 
 life, and gave to another woman, by her 
 own act, the happiness of bearing children 
 to the man of her heart. 
 
 Physically speaking, the food which we 
 put into our bodies determines the character 
 of these bodies, and we may go further, 
 and say that it also determines largely our 
 mental and moral conditions. 
 
 Fat-soaked, soggy food is not conducive 
 to mental sanity, nor can we expect a whole- 
 some view of life from the dyspeptic. A 
 whole household has been demoralized as 
 the result of a badly-cooked meal, and a 
 prisoner's fate, hanging in the balance, has 
 been adversely decided because the Judge's
 
 150 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 cook had given him a bad dinner. Prayers 
 for moral rectitude, and an utter ignorance 
 of dietetics are an illogical and absurd com- 
 bination. To pray: "make me a clean heart," 
 and then fill the body with rubbish is a 
 waste of words and fervor. 
 
 We have two bodies of thinkers on this 
 subject, one exclaiming: "Let the mind be 
 pure and wholesome and the body's safety is 
 assured," and the other: "Keep the body in 
 good order and the soul will take care of 
 itself." Either view is right so far as it 
 goes, but the truth is only to be found in 
 the acceptance of both. The mind to think 
 for the body, the body to work for the mind, 
 only so can we have the balance which is 
 perfection. 
 
 The day of the white, over-refined flour 
 is rapidly passing away, and the world has 
 become aware that for bread to be properly 
 nourishing it must be made of wheat that 
 has not been robbed of the gluten which 
 is necessary to the building up of the phys- 
 ical frame. The most satisfactory bread is 
 made from the flour of the entire wheat 
 kernel ; flour which has not undergone the 
 usual process of over-refining; the whole- 
 wheat flour, as it is sometimes called. The
 
 THE PERFECT BODY 151 
 
 white flour, to which people have become 
 accustomed, has been robbed of its phos- 
 phates and nutritive salts in order to make 
 it of white color; the starch, of which we 
 have already too much in our food, is left 
 in the flour, and the nitrogenous elements 
 are eliminated. 
 
 Without going deeply into the question of 
 vegetarianism versus the eating of animal 
 food, we must, perforce, notice the trend of 
 thought in this matter. Vegetarianism, on 
 dietetic as well as humane grounds, is greatly 
 on the increase; and there are many meat- 
 eaters whose sympathies are entirely with 
 the other party, but who are driven to de- 
 pend more or less upon animal food because 
 the persons who cater for them do not 
 understand the first principles of dietetics. 
 The primary difficulty which presents itself 
 to the would-be vegetarian, and the final 
 argument of the flesh-eaters is the fact that 
 the nitrogenous elements of food are con- 
 tained in meat in a condensed form, so that a 
 greater amount of nourishment is obtained 
 from a small piece of beefsteak than from 
 a large quantity of vegetable food. As one 
 young physician put it: "I am not going to 
 stuff myself full of peas, beans and lentils,
 
 152 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 and puff myself out like an alderman, if I 
 can get the same nourishment out of a 
 small piece of beef." 
 
 On the other hand, the fact remains, that 
 the digestive apparatus is overworked, the 
 kidneys and liver are clogged, and the mind 
 is rendered inert by the excessive quantities 
 of meat that are eaten today. 
 
 Where the caterer of a house is in sym- 
 pathy with vegetarianism, it is possible to 
 so combine the nitrogenous elements of food 
 that a perfectly sane and satisfactory diet 
 may be obtained without the use of flesh. 
 
 While the killing of animals for food may 
 be legitimate and justifiable in cases of nec- 
 essity, the eating of the fruits of the earth 
 would seem more natural and therefore more 
 beautiful. To the vegetarian the thought of 
 devouring a dead body is repulsive in the 
 extreme; and it may be that it is only our 
 familiarity with the practice that makes us 
 realize with equanimity that a life has to 
 be violently sacrificed to provide us with a 
 dead carcass on which to feast. Animal 
 food, while it may be agreeable and will 
 certainly nourish animal life, is not essential 
 to human health or existence; we can do 
 very well without it if we choose.
 
 THE PERFECT BODY 153 
 
 A reduction in flesh eating and an avoid- 
 ance of things stimulating and over-sweet, 
 are undoubtedly necessary to the body if it 
 is to be kept temperate in sexual matters; 
 and only through temperance, which is but 
 another word for harmony, balance, equa- 
 tion, can the desired perfection come. 
 
 There are some physicians and teachers 
 who advocate the eating of food in its nat- 
 ural state, who contend that cooking changes 
 organic matter into inorganic and so destroys 
 the vitality that is necessary for the proper 
 nourishment of the body. Be this as it may, 
 the consumption of a generous quantity of 
 fruits and nuts and the various vegetables 
 that do not require the action of heat to 
 make them palatable is certainly both pleas- 
 ant and profitable. 
 
 In the matter of foods much concession 
 must, perforce, be made to personal idio- 
 syncrasy; enthusiasts are apt to be too 
 sweeping in their statements, too liable to 
 insist that what agrees with and nourishes 
 them must therefore be the proper food for 
 another. We know of men who subsist en- 
 tirely upon raw peanuts and maintain vigor- 
 ous health; of others who live upon nuts 
 and fruits; of another class who depend up-
 
 154 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 on milk entirely; while the majority of peo- 
 ple are apparently quite healthy upon a mixed 
 diet. It would seem that each individual 
 should be a law unto himself. It is a gen- 
 erally accepted fact that as we grow older 
 it becomes less and less easy to properly 
 digest and dispose of large quantities of food; 
 those who study the question of dietetics 
 usually drop one of the three meals gener- 
 ally consumed, and make the other two 
 lighter in quantity and quality. 
 
 The drinking of a large quantity of water 
 would appear to be necessary to health. 
 Five-sixths of the human body is water, and 
 the excretory organs need a continuous sup- 
 ply to keep them in proper condition. One 
 latter-day physician orders the drinking of 
 one-twentieth of the entire weight daily; 
 for example, a person weighing 140 pounds 
 would be required to drink seven pints daily. 
 Where milk is used freely the drinking of 
 water is not so essential. 
 
 It may be well to suggest to readers that 
 to be not only enjoyed but assimilated, food 
 must be eaten happily and in good com- 
 pany. Miserable faces and scoldings will 
 spoil the most luxurious repast. 
 
 It goes without saying that an equable
 
 THE PERFECT BODY 155 
 
 poise of body is as necessary to perfection 
 as an unruffled condition of mind. Every 
 action of the body should express something. 
 An unmeaning tattoo of the fingers on the 
 table is a waste of force. The impatient 
 tapping of a foot upon the floor wastes more 
 strength than would be required to accom- 
 plish some worthy task. Exclamations of 
 annoyance such as "dear, dear, !" "good gra- 
 cious !" "Merciful Heavens !" spoken with, as 
 is usual, an exaggerated emphasis,are accom- 
 panied by an involuntary shock that per- 
 meates the entire nervous system. The 
 ejaculation has benefited no one and has 
 helped to deplete the nervous force of the 
 body. Impatience is not only useless but 
 wrong, both from a physiological and an 
 ethical point of view. 
 
 Perfection of body involves a rational de- 
 light in sexual joys, a fine, glad self-expres- 
 sing passion. A woman who declares her- 
 self entirely lacking in physical desire writes 
 herself down imperfect, a failure as far as 
 the race plans of the Almighty are con- 
 cerned. There is a large class of women 
 who imagine that a distaste or a pretended 
 distaste for marital intercourse renders them 
 more refined, and objects of admiration.
 
 156 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 There are women who regard the operations 
 of other organs of the body as vulgar, and 
 who apparently prefer muddy complex- 
 ions and incipient illness to a rational at- 
 tention to the demands of nature. There 
 will always be fools in the world, but the 
 would-be prude is a fool of a peculiarly ir- 
 ritating kind. Once let such an one realize 
 that her "ladylike" insensibility in matters 
 sexual proves her deficient and defective, 
 and she will be less likely to boast of it 
 if her statement be a true one or to invent 
 it if it be false. Let us show for a mo- 
 ment the absurdity of this position. 
 
 The physical body was created with certain 
 definite functions; to imagine the Creator 
 as designing the operations of powers which 
 he desired should remain inactive, would 
 be such an obvious absurdity that a child 
 could pronounce upon it. To devise a 
 scheme for continuity and to contemplate 
 impotence would be a manifest irrationality. 
 Whether a condition be the result of over- 
 indulgence or of lack of use the issue is 
 the same, and incompleteness and impotence 
 are alike abhorrent. 
 
 We are required to look for perfection 
 in ourselves, and only by so doing shall we
 
 THE PERFECT BODY 157 
 
 ever attain to it. As by a rational, joyful 
 indulgence, so only through a reasonable 
 self-restraint can we know the beauty and 
 keeness of that supreme delight in Life that 
 the Creator intended; we hold the key to 
 the matter in our own hands. Personal dis- 
 cretion and effort are undoubtedly a part 
 of the original plan. What kind of bodies 
 are we preparing for the next generation? 
 What kind of temperament and disposition 
 are we handing on to it? Are the months 
 of pregnancy to be spent in idle lounging 
 on couches, or in glad physical exertion, in 
 the joy of the woods and the flowers, in 
 the continuance of accustomed, muscle- 
 training, blood purifying and sinew-making 
 exercise? Are expectant mothers shutting 
 themselves up by day and venturing forth 
 under cover of night lest men should see 
 what is, ethically speaking, the greatest and 
 most beautiful of physical conditions; a con- 
 dition rousing in the most callous and selfish 
 of men feelings of chivalry and knight-er- 
 rantry, a condition which in a properly con- 
 stituted community would be a glory and a 
 pride ? 
 
 A perverted idea of the sex-relation 
 lies at the bottom of all this false modesty;
 
 158 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 let us hasten the era of wholesomer, cleaner 
 and saner thought of the relationship of man 
 and woman, and the day of a perfect body 
 will not be far behind. 
 
 I see a day not far distant when men 
 and women will glory in their magnificent 
 health, their capacity for physical enjoy- 
 ment, their skill, dexterity and grace, as they 
 do in the beauty and sweetness of outside 
 Nature; will be open and honest with each 
 other, fearlessly and frankly acknowledging 
 their mutual needs, and working together 
 for the perfection of the race. 
 
 To balance the man's desire for posses- 
 sion, the normal woman has that impelling 
 wish to give, that strange appreciation of 
 masterfulness where she loves that is such a 
 dominating characteristic of feminine sex- 
 nature. To be well-sexed means masculine 
 and feminine perfection; let those who are 
 so blest rejoice and glory in the fact; let 
 those who are lacking live in such a man- 
 ner, through temperance in food, freedom 
 and vigor of exercise, wisdom in dress, and 
 with these a wise mental attitude towards 
 things sexual, that to the two talents may 
 be added ten. 
 
 The sexually inert, worn-out, or altogether
 
 THE PERFECT BODY 159 
 
 deficient are hopeless; they will never give 
 to the world one great thought, one mighty 
 invention, one grand deed. This is Nature's 
 law; let those who pride themselves on sex- 
 ual insensibility ponder over it and then find 
 for themselves, if they can, an attribute over 
 which to boast which will have a firmer 
 foundation. 
 
 Ungovernable or perverted sexual appe- 
 tite is either a disease in itself or the 
 symptom of a disease. 
 
 Abnormalities of desire are as repugnant 
 to the contemplation of healthy minds as 
 is the sight of a physical monstrosity to the 
 outer eye. All such will be unknown in 
 an era of frank knowledge and acknowl- 
 edgement of sex-needs, of early unions 
 based on love and justice, of freer thinking, 
 and saner and more vigorous action. Ab- 
 horrent practices and degrading vices are 
 not confined to our prisons. They show 
 their hideous faces all about us, the out- 
 come of prurient secrecy, of unbridled early 
 excesses, of idle satiety, of morbid curiosity. 
 
 Let the well-meaning persons who are 
 concerning themselves so earnestly and shud- 
 dering at the increasing divorces in our land, 
 turn their attention to a more serious danger, 
 and to more practical issues.
 
 l6o WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 There are secret and abominable vices 
 propagating among us, and the reformers 
 who should be looking to this infamy are 
 moving about with bandaged eyes, their 
 unwise hands seeking to hold together 
 those whom Nature and Justice has declared 
 unequally and therefore improperly paired. 
 
 Let these tear the veils from their eyes, 
 wash the prurient prudery from their minds, 
 shake off the fetters of ecclesiastical dicta- 
 tion, and let the clear stream of a wise and 
 pure knowledge pour itself over these can- 
 cerous spots in our social body. They will 
 find this a more godly and human occupa- 
 tion than that of forcing erring creatures to 
 perpetuate fatal mistakes; of doing their ut- 
 most to keep together those who should 
 never have met; of seriously contemplating 
 the procreation of children by persons whose 
 love for each other has become a thing of 
 the past. 
 
 That there is an increasing number of 
 divorces I do not deny; that the fact is a 
 cause for alarm I am not at all sure. It 
 might be wise to gravely consider the ques- 
 tion: "Do these divorces break up happy 
 homes ?" 
 
 If truth and common-sense answer this
 
 THE PERFECT BODY l6l 
 
 question in the negative, we have but to 
 consider the further question, "Is it wisdom 
 or is it foolishness to hold together by force 
 of law, ecclesiastical or social, two who de- 
 sire to be apart? Is it holy or is it unholy 
 to force persons into hourly companionship 
 who shrink from each other mentally and 
 physically? Is the continuance of such a 
 marriage a tribute to a sacred institution or 
 an insult to it? Can one contemplate with 
 any degree of complacency the procreation 
 of children by a man and woman who no 
 longer love?" 
 
 A study of Mr. Snyder's book: "The Ge- 
 ography of Marriage" will show the present 
 absurd social conditions caused by the wide 
 divergence of the laws in our different 
 states with regard to marriage and divorce. 
 In the state of Arizona persons who have 
 lived together for one year become legally 
 married whether they ever intended such a 
 relationship, or desired it; while a clergy- 
 man in Worcester Mass, who took the wom- 
 an he loved to wife, by mutual pledges, in 
 the face of his full congregation, who rilled 
 in a marriage certificate and then lived in 
 happy wedlock for many years had to un- 
 dergo the humiliation of the denial of his
 
 l62 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 marriage by the courts, a law having been 
 passed in the state of Massachusetts in 1646, 
 which was still in force, forbidding persons 
 to marry except before some magistrate or 
 third party qualified to perform the service! 
 
 In New York State remarriage is refused 
 to the guilty party to a divorce; he may, 
 however, cross the ferry to Hoboken and 
 marry whom he will, without fear of the law. 
 
 A man desiring a divorce from his New 
 York wife may gain one in South Dakota 
 and, gaining a decree which gives him the 
 privilege of remarriage, he may marry again 
 and settle in the West, rearing a family of 
 children. His first wife, having retained 
 her rights in her own state, may sue him 
 for divorce, naming his new wife as co- 
 respondent; or, if she does not see fit to 
 sue him for divorce, the husband may, if 
 he wishes, come back East, and live com- 
 fortably with wife No. i, and have more 
 children; each family will be legitimate in 
 its own state, and illegitimate in the other! 
 Whether a uniform marriage law could be 
 successfully enacted and carried into effect 
 is a serious question; it would certainly seem 
 that some concerted action on the part of 
 the States might remedy this scandalous 
 condition of affairs.
 
 KING MIND 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 N considering the human 
 mind and its relation to the 
 sexual organism we shall 
 take another position than 
 that of the materialist. Nei- 
 ther is it our province or 
 intention to offer any new psychological 
 theories; we will simply look at the matter 
 from the point of view of the majority of 
 mankind who believe in immortality. We 
 take the position that better than the as- 
 sumption that we are bodies that contain 
 immortal souls, is the thought that we are 
 souls, inhabiting, temporarily, abodesof flesh. 
 The soul, the mind, the self, however we 
 may designate the persisting element, the 
 indestructible ego, while figuring on this 
 world-plane of existence, uses the physical 
 body as its instrument of expression; what 
 it may use in a future life, under altered 
 conditions, it is fruitless now to speculate; 
 our business is with today, and today's is- 
 sues and problems.
 
 164 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 In our present life the brain is the vehicle 
 of thought; and the brain and the nervous 
 system being so closely related that they 
 act and react on each other constantly, it 
 will readily be seen that our thinking de- 
 pends to a large extent upon our mode of 
 living. That the action of the brain should 
 be modified, aided, or hindered by conditions 
 of digestion, by physical vigor or fatigue, 
 by the equable, excited or stimulated con- 
 dition of the nerves, is easily understood. 
 Hence it follows that mind and body must 
 be in harmonious accord if the proper de- 
 velopment of either is to continue. 
 
 If bodily conditions exercise so impor- 
 tant an influence upon mental processes, no 
 less does the mind control the bodily func- 
 tions to a certain extent. The most sceptical 
 in this direction will probably remember 
 some such occasion as this in his experience: 
 the sitting down to a meal with a vigorous 
 appetite, and the sudden lack of desire for 
 food when a message containing evil tid- 
 ings interrupted the meal. 
 
 The danger today, is, however, not in the 
 direction of lack of faith in the influence 
 of mind over matter; on the contrary, the 
 credulity of a large portion of the commun-
 
 KING MIND 165 
 
 ity with regard to the absolute control of 
 mental power over disease is likely to cause 
 a revulsion to the old disbelief in the effi- 
 cacy of auto-suggestion or self-hypnotism 
 to affect conditions of health or disease. 
 It may be, however, that out of the pres- 
 ent chaos of thought we may eventually 
 evolve some sound basic principles that are 
 scientifically demonstrable, and yet simple 
 enough to appeal to the uneducated or 
 the under-educated. 
 
 Recent experiments in hypnotic sugges- 
 tion have demonstrated new possibilities in 
 the cure of disease and the prevention of 
 crime. 
 
 Suggestion plays an important part in the 
 education of a child whether we realize it 
 or not. As Mr. Baldwin forcibly puts it: 
 "A man labors for his children ten hours a 
 day, gets his life insured for their support 
 after his death, and yet he lets their mental 
 growth, the formation of their character, 
 the evolution of the personality, go on by 
 absorption, if not worse, from common, 
 vulgar, imported and changing, often im- 
 moral attendants." 
 
 Suggestions of ill-health may be given a 
 child by solicitious inquiries as to his feel-
 
 1 66 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 ings, and remarks upon his appearance; and, 
 conversely, a condition of health may be 
 induced by a cheerful disregard of minor 
 ailments, coupled, of course, with wise over- 
 sight. A child who has absolute trust in the 
 word of a parent may be relieved of acute 
 pain through the power of suggestion as 
 given by the parent; "Mother's hands" and 
 a stern order to the pain to leave the child, 
 with assurance that the pain will gradually 
 disappear, having, in many cases, the de- 
 sired effect. 
 
 As all students of practical psychology 
 know, a command to a child given in the 
 form of a prohibition usually fails of its ob- 
 ject. "Don't do" simply suggests doing, 
 and generally results in disobedience. The 
 ancient story of the mother who left home 
 with the caution to the children not "to 
 put beans up their noses," thereby suggest- 
 ing to them an interesting experiment which 
 they subsequently tried, to their own agony 
 and the mother's discomfiture, is an extreme 
 example of much modern foolishness in the 
 matter of discipline. Kindergarten theories 
 and practice are doing much good in this 
 connection, but it will be some time before 
 parental injunctions cease to be couched in
 
 KING MIND 167 
 
 the form of prohibitions, and "don't," is 
 eliminated from the mother's vocabulary. 
 
 Professor O' Shea of Wisconsin Univer- 
 sity tells a story of the fall from grace of 
 a boy whose father left him alone in the 
 house with the sole suggestion: "Don't touch 
 the clock." The boy had never touched the 
 clock before, but when the father returned 
 it had been trifled with to its exceeding det- 
 riment. Commenting on the story, Prof. 
 O' Shea said: "If instead of leaving the boy 
 with his mind empty of all suggestion save 
 one that centered his thoughts upon the 
 clock, the father had said: 'There are some 
 bits of wood in the cellar and you may have 
 my tools to make a box if you like,' the 
 clock would have remained intact." 
 
 Another story told by Prof. O' Shea illus- 
 trates the fact that the trained mind of the 
 adult is also keenly susceptible to the power 
 of suggestion. On the wall of the labora- 
 tory in the scientific department of the uni- 
 versity was a notice: "Do not strike a match 
 in this room!" Owing to the danger con- 
 nected with explosive gases, this caution 
 was very necessary. One of the learned 
 professors was seen, one day, to deliberately 
 strike a match and watch it burn out.
 
 l68 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 When brought before the Faculty Board 
 and asked to explain his action he assured 
 the Faculty that he had had no reason 
 for doing so unjustifiable an act; his only 
 explanation was that, being at the time in 
 deep thought on an abstruse subject, his 
 eye had caught the prohibition on the wall 
 and the suggestion of the striking of a 
 match had affected him subconsciously and 
 prompted an act which had been performed 
 by him without his conscious volition. 
 
 The cultivation of any faculty means im- 
 proved capacity and powers. The cultiva- 
 tion of the imagination and of the aesthetic 
 sense opens a new world of delight to the 
 ordinary man and woman, and means added 
 capacity for enjoyment, added pleasure in 
 what may have been to them the common 
 things of life. Keen appreciations of both 
 joy and pain have increased with the de- 
 velopment and stimulation of the nervous 
 system. The savage, whose brain and nerv- 
 ous organism are comparatively undevel- 
 oped, does not feel the same intense joy or 
 grief, or the same physical pain or pleasure 
 that we do whose nerve centres more quick- 
 ly respond to stimulation; the ascetic life 
 and apparent bravery of some savage tribes
 
 KING MIND 169 
 
 may, perhaps, be explained in this way. 
 
 The beauty of the most exquisite thought 
 of the world's greatest poet would be lost 
 upon the dull perception of the old-clothes- 
 man; one might with the utmost enthusiasm 
 explain the law governing the solar system 
 to the average Irish day laborer and he 
 would listen with stolid face and unhearing 
 ears; ask him how many dollars he earns 
 in a week or what he has had for breakfast 
 and he will understand you perfectly. 
 
 A spiritual existence has no attractions for 
 the materialist, and could not have, in the 
 very nature of things; and the saint finds his 
 heaven as a matter of course, and realizes 
 its joy even while yet upon the plane of 
 physical existence. The thing we worship 
 we tend to become; and our realization can 
 never transcend the thing desired and ex- 
 pected. This worship of the ideal, the striv- 
 ing after something higher and better than 
 he has yet attained, this admiration for what 
 is great and good, are just what distinguish 
 man from the rest of the animal world. 
 Man's moral ideals are what mark him as 
 a man. 
 
 The ideal in body and mind development 
 is, of course, harmony; the body and mind
 
 1 70 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 working together for mutual benefit; the 
 body's wants attended to with due regard 
 for the dignity of the body, and the mind 
 given its hours of aspiration, of study, of 
 quiet receptivity. It may be that what we 
 call inspiration in the case of the poet, and 
 intuition when, in important matters, that 
 has been proved to be a safer guide than 
 experience, are the realization in us of that 
 spark from Divinity which is the seed of 
 our immortality, represent to us the highest 
 that we can experience in this sphere of 
 earthly activity. 
 
 The informing, creative power, the eter- 
 nal essence of all that is divine, it is for 
 this that the hearts of men yearn and to 
 which they look. Through the child and the 
 poet the spirit speaks plainly; but the world 
 does not understand. A flash of inspiration 
 informs the genius or the reformer, and 
 men say: "He is mad." But the world goes 
 on, and the works of men die, and only 
 the thought of genius endures: it endures, 
 and the thunder of the true reformer, and 
 the joy of the poet, because such are of the 
 essence of the eternal. Our intuitive sense 
 of the highest in us recognizes our moments 
 of high aspiration as the greatest in our
 
 KING MIND 
 
 lives; when upon some mountain top, wheth- 
 er literal or figurative, we shut out all that 
 is ignoble or time-serving, when the soul is 
 open to the inflow of divine light and the 
 pleasures of mere sense enjoyment are as 
 though they were not. 
 
 The thought that prompts the sacrifice of 
 one's life for the good of another; the firm 
 desire and determination to work, live, and, 
 if need be, die for a great and good cause; 
 the flash of the poet's genius and the high 
 conception of the artist or the writer these 
 are the most real of our higher mental 
 states. What we voluntarily unite ourselves 
 to that in time we become; according as 
 we use the higher, the aspiring, the god-like 
 thoughts or the lower, the transient, the 
 earth-thoughts, so do we become spiritual 
 or worldly. 
 
 JLove is transcendental in its very essence; 
 and love's expression, at its highest, is the 
 expression of an unselfish emotion. It is 
 curious and interesting to note how what is, 
 in its beginning, a purely egotistical feeling, 
 a desire for physical possession, the gratifi- 
 cation of a strong instinct of affinity, be- 
 comes, through love, through the cultivation 
 of the imagination and the emotions, the
 
 172 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 chivalrous, unselfish, protecting love of the 
 man for the woman, the yearning self-sac- 
 rificing devotion of the woman for the man. 
 
 Do we find Love, as we know it, in the 
 uncultured savage ? I am not now speaking 
 of maternal love, which is an instinct shared 
 by us with most female animals throughout 
 creation, but sex-love, the faculty that in- 
 cludes, as we have seen, desire, passion and 
 unselfishness? 
 
 In the savage, whose mind is uncultivated 
 and whose appreciations and imagination 
 are undeveloped, we find the mere sex-im- 
 pulse, not greatly differentiated from that 
 of the lower animals whose actions are 
 prompted by instinct alone. The cultivation 
 of the imagination, the development of 
 tenderness and affection have given us the 
 altruistic element that is the glory of all 
 marriage that is worthy of the name, and 
 of all real friendship. 
 
 That joy in the intimate relations of the 
 sexes is largely due to the imagination needs 
 no proof; there is a whole realm of sexual 
 delight of which even the borders are un- 
 known to the brutal man and the materialist. 
 
 The theory that love is a brain condition, 
 that the organs of love are a part of brain
 
 KING MIND 173 
 
 mechanism has, however, been for some 
 time exploded. It needs no scientist to dem- 
 onstrate the locality of the sensation when 
 a sudden pang of jealousy, or terror, or pas- 
 sion takes one; the solar plexus would seem 
 to be the seat of the great emotions, the 
 inmost heart of being. 
 
 But is it possible to measure what the 
 mind gives of its store of wonderful things, 
 dreams of beauty, idealization of the one 
 loved, an idealization that often survives 
 time, old age, and wrong? 
 
 What division of the mind do we use in 
 our sexual life? This is a serious question. 
 In the intimate sex-relationship does the 
 physical organism take the bit between 
 its teeth, and rush onward at its will, drag- 
 ging the mind, a temporarily incapable 
 driver, at its heels? With the unbalanced 
 human entity this is the situation, undoubt- 
 edly; the sex-passion, being to such a one 
 of the earth, earthy, calls for no aid from 
 the mind save that afforded by a more or 
 less vulgar memory of former pleasure. 
 The condition in which the ignorant or the 
 sensual individual finds himself is essentially 
 a physical condition. It is a physical hunger 
 that must be satisfied in just the same spirit,
 
 174 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 (provided, of course, that he has a moral 
 right to the act) in which he eats a meal. 
 Sometimes, as in the case of the decadent, 
 and a certain species of degenerate, the mind 
 may be debased into pandering to the lower 
 motions of the bodily desire. Mr. LeGal- 
 lienne in his stanzas, "The Decadent to his 
 Soul,'' has given a revolting, yet perfect 
 illustration of this possibility. 
 
 'Then from that day he used his soul 
 As bitters to the over dulcet sins, 
 As olives to the fatness of the feast 
 She made those dear heart-breaking ecstasies 
 Of minor chords amid the Phrygian flutes, 
 She sauced his sins with splendid memories, 
 Starry regrets and infinite hopes and fears; 
 His holy youth and his first love 
 Made pearly background to strange-colored 
 vice. 
 
 Sin is no sin when virtue is forgot. 
 It is so good in sin to keep in sight 
 The white hills whence we fell, to measure 
 
 by- 
 
 To say I was so high, so white, so pure, 
 And am so low, so blood-stained, and so 
 
 base; 
 
 I revel here amid the sweet sweet mire 
 And yonder are the hills of morning flowers ;
 
 KING MIND 175 
 
 So high, so low; so lost and with me yet; 
 To stretch the octave 'tween the dream and 
 
 deed, 
 
 Ah, that's the thrill! 
 To dream so well, to do so ill, 
 There comes the bitter-sweet that makes 
 
 the sin? 
 
 Someone has said that cruelty is due to 
 a lack of imagination; and careful thought 
 on the subject tends to at least a partial 
 acceptance of the statement. Imagination, 
 intuitive noble impulse, poetic fancy, these 
 pertain to the highest part of our nature, 
 and when the highest is in cultivation a 
 great wide sympathy is involved, a sympa- 
 thy that would make cruelty impossible. Ac- 
 ceptance of this hypothesis would justify 
 the assumption that any species of marital 
 tyranny is impossible to the man who sys- 
 tematically cultivates his mental powers and 
 imagination. To a mind which is even to a 
 limited degree educated out of the merely 
 physical, sexual subjection must be a thing 
 abhorrant, and mutual delight the only pos- 
 sibility. 
 
 Dr. Joseph Howe says: "Mental emo- 
 tions have a more powerful influence over 
 the functions of the genital organs than they
 
 176 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 have over any other functions of the body.'' 
 He gives interesting examples, from his 
 own practice, of the peculiar effect of the 
 first sex-experience of a man upon his 
 future experiences. Such instances are not 
 only interesting but extremely pertinent, 
 showing as they do the necessity for right 
 mental conditions, and the importance of a 
 proper initiation into sex-mysteries. If, as 
 is proved by numbers of such instances, a 
 man's whole future life is "marked" by the 
 mental emotions excited in him by his first 
 sex-experience, how important is his con- 
 dition of mind in early youth, how neces- 
 sary that his associations shall be in every 
 respect wise and desirable. 
 
 The writer is acquainted with one whose 
 sole creed for many years was: "What is 
 good is beautiful, what is evil is ugly." And, 
 indeed, for the fully-awakened and keenly 
 sensitive soul such a profession might suf- 
 fice. Delicate sensibilities, a sane moral vis- 
 ion, and sound physical health, imply an ideal 
 life. To cultivate an appreciation of the 
 beautiful in human life is an obvious duty, 
 to recognise the essential beauty in sex-re- 
 lationship, and to cultivate such appreciation 
 would result happily for both parties con-
 
 KING MIND 177 
 
 cerned. The final product of such recog- 
 nition would be a truer and healthier phil- 
 osophy of life, a philosophy in which there 
 would be no place for anxious foreboding, 
 excited vexation, or egotistical unfairness, 
 a life in which selfish recrimination and un- 
 natural desire would be alike unknown. 
 
 To the mind that is fairly poised, the 
 duties and pleasures of life stand forth in 
 their true relationship, and minor discom- 
 forts, trivial annoyances are lightly accepted 
 or unheeded. To such, fear of consequences 
 is impossible, and worry is a manifest ab- 
 surdity. 
 
 The man who sees life in its true per- 
 spective realizes that fear of any sort is a 
 deterrent; no good thing can come of a 
 mind that is timorous and time-serving. The 
 man who consults the world's opinion rather 
 than the dictates of his own higher nature 
 will never rise above mediocrity, either 
 spiritually or materially. Continual depend- 
 ence upon public opinion, and perpetual fear 
 of the world's censure are stupifying, stulti- 
 fying and deadening influences upon the 
 mind and the will, and in such a soul-destroy- 
 ing mental atmosphere no holy, or great, or 
 beautiful thing can grow.
 
 178 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 If there is one thing more important than 
 another which we should strive to inculcate 
 in our children, it is fearlessness. At present 
 almost all parental injunctions are tinged 
 with appeals to one of the basest of human 
 emotions. A happy young creature who 
 might safely play with and enjoy the com- 
 panionship of all the living things with which 
 he comes in contact, and fearlessly handle 
 and caress the young animals with which 
 he is by nature in sympathy, is taught dread 
 of his playmates by such parental prohibit- 
 ions as these: "Don't touch that dog, he 
 may bite you." "Oh, that nasty caterpillar, 
 knock it off!" "Keep away from the cow; 
 she will hook you!" "Run from that hor- 
 rid toad; don't let it spit on you!" And 
 so on, till the poor child shrinks from con- 
 tact with the creatures that might have af- 
 forded him both knowledge and delight, 
 and feels that the whole animal creation is 
 in league to do him hurt. 
 
 Two children, aged three and six respec- 
 tively, being taken by their mother to the 
 snake show held a few years ago in New 
 York City, fearlessly followed her example, 
 and handled the snakes with a gentle de- 
 light, twining them about their arms, and
 
 KING MIND 
 
 179 
 
 laying their own soft faces against the cool 
 skins of the beautiful creatures. The word 
 snake, such a bug-bear and a horror to most 
 children, became associated in their minds 
 with things of beauty, and a happy holiday; 
 an impression that would, doubtless, remain 
 with them through life. 
 
 Above all, and in the Name of God, let 
 us teach our children fearlessness as to the 
 world's opinion; teach them that God and 
 the inner voice are the only arbiters, and 
 that the approbation of society may be the 
 veriest misfortune; teach them that our sole 
 obligation in life is to live up to our highest 
 ideals, and to cultivate these ideals by com- 
 panionship with the great and the good 
 among our fellows and through the pages 
 of literature. 
 
 Anxious foreboding is utterly unphilo- 
 sophical; if the dreaded evil does not oc- 
 cur, which is the fact in the majority of 
 cases, we have wasted time, thought and 
 emotion; if it does materialize, and there 
 is a demand for special strength, wisdom, 
 or patience, we shall find that the root of 
 these has been sapped and their energy ex- 
 hausted by previous worry. Not only so; 
 with worry and fear, as with wise and
 
 l8o WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 happy thoughts, it is undoubtedly true that 
 we attract to ourselves the conditions upon 
 which the mind dwells. 
 
 Worry, fear, vexation, and similar evil 
 thoughts, have a most definite effect upon 
 the female organism, not only during gesta- 
 tion, but also at the time of sexual union; 
 light-heartedness, and a loving appreciation 
 of the situation is a message of health to 
 the object of devotion, and physical con- 
 tent is implied. 
 
 As suggested in the chapter "Motherhood 
 a Joy," there are many intelligent men and 
 women who are able to realize all the beauty 
 of the most intimate relationship, without 
 endangering the health or perhaps the life 
 of the wife, or begetting children whose ex- 
 istence would be a proof of unwisdom. This 
 through no attempt at any sort of "preven- 
 tion," or "precaution," or appliance, but sim- 
 ply through a willing abandonment of the 
 sensual and a mental cultivation of the purely 
 loving and affectionate; the love-act is fully 
 and mutually enjoyed without loss or languor 
 to either. Such a relationship has in it ele- 
 ments of beauty, and of delicate sweetness 
 which are lacking in the too-often hasty 
 and merely sensual act; and the married
 
 KING MIND l8l 
 
 pair who are wise enough to understand 
 this will find themselves lovers, sensitive, 
 appreciative and devoted, their honeymoon 
 prolonged through the years of middle-age. 
 
 We know of young wives who, though 
 they were of an affectionate nature, and 
 truly in love with their husbands, were yet 
 afraid to voluntarily offer a kiss or caress, 
 because the attention was invariably mis- 
 understood; the little act of affection was 
 taken as implying a desire for a relation that 
 had no place in her mind. There are few 
 husbands who are so grossly stupid as this; 
 yet there are many who fail to recognise 
 the possibilities in the realm of love; and 
 who do not understand that a woman may 
 be starved for affection while satiated with 
 sexual sweets. 
 
 If, in the nearness and dearness of mar- 
 ital intercourse, the mind were kept solely 
 upon that nearness and dearness, except in 
 the rare intervals where a complete union is 
 mutually desired, not only would the 
 relationship be infinitely more delightful 
 and less exhausting to the wife, but there 
 would be established a refined, delicate, and 
 spiritualized relationship that could not but 
 react favorably upon the participants.
 
 1 82 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 The mind and the body were never cre- 
 ated to be in perpetual conflict, but to aid, 
 intensify, and beautify each other; to grow 
 and develop together; to avoid for both 
 asceticism on the one hand and grossness 
 on the other; and great at last through 
 strenuous effort and glad agreement, to 
 realize the supreme intention of the great 
 Designer.
 
 THE RATIONALE OF CELIBACY 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 HERE is a strong obligation 
 on the part of every young 
 man to marry and marry early. 
 If he is vigorous and healthy 
 the responsibility of marriage 
 will be a stimulus, and in any 
 case, the condition is one of health and, 
 if wisely entered into, of happiness. A man 
 of good abilities and an assured even though 
 small financial position, is safer, happier, 
 and in a better attitude towards Society as 
 a married man than as a bachelor. 
 
 To deprecate hasty and injudicious mar- 
 riage is a matter of course; but a young 
 man of five-and-twenty who is endowed 
 with a reasonable amount of good sense 
 and a modicum of self-restraint should cer- 
 tainly be able to recognize the matrimonial 
 pit-falls. 
 
 An old bachelor does not make a satis- 
 factory husband ; as a chief objection, he has 
 fixed habits where adaptability is the first
 
 184 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 desideratum; at forty he is either a celibate 
 or a loose liver, neither of which conditions 
 makes him eligible for matrimony. 
 
 In the development of character, the in- 
 evitable yielding, the necessary harmonizing 
 of interests exercises a beneficent influence. 
 
 There is no more beautiful sight than of 
 two young people, the complement of each 
 other mentally and physically, strong, lov- 
 ing, ardent, and unselfish, with a little flock 
 multiplying around them as the years go 
 by, developing and improving side by side, 
 middle age finding them still young, still 
 loving, and surrounded by a bodyguard of 
 fine sons and daughters, the obvious fruit 
 of love and harmony. 
 
 If a man of twenty-five in a fair finan- 
 cial position and with a healthy physical 
 and moral constitution marries the woman 
 he loves, her age being not under twenty 
 and not over twenty-five, her health per- 
 fect and her feelings in accord with his, the 
 pair have begun life under ideal conditions, 
 they are fulfilling the intentions of Nature 
 in her own way and she will take care of 
 them and their offspring. 
 
 A similarity in tastes is presupposed, as 
 this is usually the cause of attraction in the
 
 THE RATIONALE OF CELIBACY 185 
 
 first place, and as the years go on there 
 will necessarily be a gradual conforming to 
 the preferences of the other that will re- 
 sult through middle life and in old age in 
 a serene and beautiful satisfaction in each 
 other's society. 
 
 In the selection of a life-partner, if all 
 other qualifications would seem to point to- 
 wards the advisability of marriage, a very 
 good test is the consideration whether he 
 or she rouses, stimulates, what is best and 
 highest; not, necessarily, what is religious 
 as religion is thought of today, but the 
 grandest, the noblest, intellectually, as well 
 as spiritually. Sense pleasures soon fade 
 unillumined by the mind and the imagina- 
 tion. 
 
 It is hardly necessary in a volume that 
 is one long plea for love, that endeavors 
 to show not only its high office but its nec- 
 essity to the greatness and grandeur of life 
 and the health and happiness of the race, 
 to argue that marriage without love is not 
 only foolish but criminal. A deep, strong 
 passionate love, combined with reasonable 
 good sense is absolutely essential to wise 
 and satisfactory marriage. 
 
 It is taken for granted that our young
 
 1 86 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 people understand that the brain and the im- 
 agination as well as the emotions are stim- 
 ulated temporarily by even a passing sex- 
 attraction; the religious man, so worked 
 upon, will find himself actuated apparently 
 by an excessive fervor and vehemence of 
 holiness. As in the case of Hall Caine's 
 "Christian" a man may even deem himself 
 actuated by an inspiration and spiritual in- 
 tention when actually he is in the grasp of 
 an earth-born passion. The religious and 
 the sexual are closely interwoven, though 
 such an idea may be scouted by the ordi- 
 nary parson and his followers. The notice- 
 able increase in families after a period of 
 religious revival has impressed upon the ob- 
 servation of physicians the connection of 
 these two elemental instincts in human 
 nature; and the situation so forcibly set 
 forth in that remarkable book: "The Silence 
 of Dean Maitland," the possibility of an 
 austere religious life existing at the same 
 time as, and almost becoming identical with 
 sexual sin is not incredible to the observ- 
 ing. As an illustration of how deeply mis- 
 taken as to the origin of religious fervor a 
 youthful mind may be it is interesting to 
 note the mental condition of a devout and
 
 THE RATIONALE OF CELIBACY 1 87 
 
 pure young girl who made a practice of 
 relating her religious experiences in her 
 diary. Here is a portion of one entry: 
 
 "I went to bed with such a swelling of 
 all the organs that I was dull and, as it 
 were stupified. I gently kissed, like a little 
 dog that is beaten, the hand of my Master; 
 and then, as is my custom on every occasion 
 of danger, I looked on that dear Master 
 with a burning gaze of love and trustful- 
 ness, and going quite out of my own hate- 
 ful personality, I reposed in Him all my 
 true life, so that I went to sleep in conse- 
 quence of this practical death, and at once 
 I was no more conscious of myself than I 
 should have been had I died outright. I 
 awoke for a moment in the night, but, as 
 I was no better, I took refuge again in my 
 dear Master 
 
 "I meditated on the meditations of Saint 
 Francois de Sales on the Song of Songs at 
 my morning prayer. One night, therefore, 
 while wide awake, I felt myself in suspense 
 in the midst of all my enjoyments, and a- 
 waiting, with a sort of terror, what the Lord 
 would say. I saw Him most vividly as He 
 
 is described in the Song of Songs 
 
 He lay down near me, put His feet on my
 
 1 88 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 feet, laid His hand on mine and enlarged His 
 thorny crown where He pressed His head 
 to mine; then, while giving me a lively 
 sense of the pains of His nails and His 
 thorns, touching my lips with His own, and 
 giving me the divinest kiss of a divine 
 spouse, he breathed into my mouth a de- 
 licious breath which, pouring over my whole 
 being a refreshing vigor, rejoiced it all over 
 with an incomparable thrill, and won it for 
 him without reserve."* 
 
 If the experience of the specialist in 
 nervous deseases who told the writer that 
 in his large and varied experience he had 
 found that more moral catastrophes were 
 traceable to young people going to evening 
 church together than by their going to dances 
 together, can be corroborated by other prac- 
 titioners and scientific thinkers, there is 
 ground for very serious thought and care 
 on the part of moral and spiritual teachers 
 in this connection. It is because self-de- 
 ception is so easy where the senses are con- 
 cerned that it is wise to note carefully 
 whether the reforming or exalting influence 
 of the loved one is an enduring, permanent 
 and dominant one. 
 
 *Ribot, "Heredity."
 
 THE RATIONALE OF CELIBACY 189 
 
 While advocating early marriage, I am 
 well aware of the reasonableness of the 
 plea of young men that they cannot afford 
 to marry, that girls expect too much now- 
 a-days. At the same time this condition of 
 things offers a test of the depth and reality 
 of reciprocal affection which should be of 
 infinite value. To lay bare his financial con- 
 dition to the woman he loves, and ask her 
 to share the comparatively humble position 
 which he has to offer, at the same time 
 firmly stating his intention never to run into 
 debt, nor be guided by desire of display, 
 such a declaration tenderly and lovingly 
 given would soon prove the real nature of 
 the feeling entertained. 
 
 In the matter of finance, a true wife will 
 realize that her part is to save as well as 
 to spend; that it is a serious reflection up- 
 on her class that men are able to point to 
 the day-laborer and say: "In that station 
 in life a wife is an economy, but it is far 
 otherwise with us.' 1 She will feel that it 
 is her duty, with her natural shrewdness 
 and intuitive perception, to aid her husband 
 in times of business doubt or difficulty, and 
 in all cases to frame her expenditure ac- 
 cording to his income.
 
 190 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 A man who is able to bring a business 
 difficulty home to his wife and know that 
 he can expect an intelligent interest has an 
 unpaid confidential clerk whom no money 
 can hire. 
 
 It is a wonderful fact that without any 
 preparation for or knowledge of business, a 
 woman's intuitive thought will often solve 
 a problem or smooth out a difficulty that 
 has defied a man's power of decision and 
 racked his brain for days. In any case, the 
 mere fact of talking the matter over to a 
 sympathetic, interested woman listener, will 
 often relieve the pressure of care and clear 
 away difficulties. To discuss a business ques- 
 tion with another man, in business hours, 
 is often unproductive and sometimes dan- 
 gerous; his interests are of a personal char- 
 acter and, if scrupulous, are not likely to be 
 sympathetic. With husband and wife, the 
 interests are identical and advice whole- 
 souled. A woman's logical judgment may 
 often be at fault, her intuitive judgment but 
 rarely; and he is a wise man who realizes 
 and acts upon this fact. 
 
 Enforced celibacy is a perversion of na- 
 ture and unless it also means chastity is a 
 revolting thing. The man who declines to
 
 THE RATIONALE OF CELIBACY 191 
 
 incur the responsibility of matrimony and 
 then spends his evening in a brothel, is, if 
 he understands nature's laws and penalties, 
 a madman without a madman's excuse. The 
 spectacle of sweet, tender, capable, so-called 
 "old maids," women suited for wifehood 
 and maternity, on the one hand, and the 
 army of wretched prostitutes on the other 
 argues a serious blunder in economics, a- 
 side from its moral aspect. 
 
 Voluntary celibacy, for a time, or in some 
 cases for life, is often necessary. No man 
 who is half a man in self-restraint and a 
 regard for the good of his kind, will run 
 the risk of handing on dementia or acute 
 disease; a case of this kind calls for sincere 
 sympathy though inexorable judgment. 
 There is nothing that remains for such a 
 man or woman but the deliberate turning 
 of the sexual impulse into some wide chan- 
 nel of philanthrophy, or of mental achieve- 
 ment. 
 
 That such transformation has been volun- 
 tarily accomplished in the interest of science 
 and the arts as well known, Kant, the Phil- 
 osopher, Swedenborg, the Mystic, Descartes, 
 the Metaphysician, Newton and Leibnitz, 
 the Scientists, are a few instances of volun-
 
 192 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 tary celibacy that the great creative faculty 
 might be turned from physical into definite 
 mental and scientific productions. 
 
 Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Rossini, Handel, 
 and Myerbeer, were unmarried; with them 
 the grand, yet deviable sex-impulse was 
 used to produce musical creations that will 
 outlive any children of the flesh that might 
 have been born to them. 
 
 A striking example of what may be ac- 
 complished by the voluntary transmutation 
 of the physical into the altruistic impulse, 
 of the relinquishing of the natural desire for 
 personal offspring in order to embrace with 
 great and conquering sympathies the vast 
 army of the suffering and the sinning we 
 see in our woman reformer passed but a 
 few years ago out of the sights and sounds 
 of sense, Frances Willard. 
 
 A curious yet easily comprehended case 
 in this connection was told to the writer by 
 a prominent physician of New York City. 
 
 "I knew a girl" he said "in the early days 
 of my practice who was interesting to me 
 on account of her freely-expressed and evi- 
 dently genuine desire for mother-hood, in 
 the anticipated marriage future.
 
 THE RATIONALE OF CELIBACY 193 
 
 "I don't care about men very much," she 
 said to me, 'but I long for children." 
 
 She married and moved to another place; 
 I was curious to know how she had fared, 
 and some two years afterwards visited her 
 new home. I found a faded nervous wreck 
 of the woman I had known. She avoided 
 all reference to her husband and I saw plain- 
 ly that she was too proud or too loyal to 
 tell me the truth. I commented upon her 
 childless condition and she turned her head 
 away and said: "I do not want children, I 
 thank Heaven every day that I have none." 
 
 "Oh, doctor," exclaimed an interested list- 
 ener to the story: "how did it end? What 
 did she do with that great maternal intinct, 
 what did she make of it?" 
 
 "Nothing, alas,'' he said, "she was not an 
 intellectual woman, and she did not under- 
 stand these things; she only knew that her 
 life was spoiled, her powers and desires 
 thwarted; and the last time I saw her, she 
 was a confirmed victim of the cocaine habit. 
 When women are made acquainted with 
 the meaning of these things by early, wise 
 instruction, then may we hope for the re- 
 generation of society." 
 
 A chaste and voluntary celibacy is pos-
 
 194 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 sible, we know; but it must be remembered 
 that it is not in nature's plan, and that only 
 exceptional powers of mind and will can 
 justify it after maturity is reached. 
 
 As a single standard of morals for men 
 and women is the only reasonable founda- 
 tion on which to stand, and as women, 
 properly constituted, as well as men are en- 
 dowed with strong physical needs, it follows 
 that early marriage is both natural and wise. 
 It is a shame to any country to see un- 
 married women with gray hair eking out a 
 scanty lifelihood, while the keepers of houses 
 of prostitution wax fat on the profits of their 
 unholy trade. 
 
 Custom blinds the sight and hardens the 
 heart of the men and women ^of our land. 
 We see disease and iniquity walking our 
 streets nightly, threatening the lives of our 
 children, and the happiness of our homes, 
 and we shrug our shoulders and talk about 
 a "necessary evil." 
 
 If a plague visited one of our great cities, 
 how eager we would be to stamp it out; 
 and yet a deadlier disease lurks in the midst 
 of us, and we call it "a necessary evil." 
 
 Looking at the matter from a purely eth- 
 ical standpoint, does it seem fair that the
 
 THE RATIONALE OF CELIBACY 195 
 
 necessity of a man should mean the degra- 
 dation of a woman ? Does it seem probable 
 that the Almighty Designer of life should 
 give us a physical law that necessitates 
 the breaking of a moral one? 
 
 Again, if the prostitute is following a 
 profession that is necessary to the health 
 of men, and if, as is often urged, she is 
 thereby protecting the innocence and purity 
 of our young sisters and .'daughters, why is 
 she not honored instead of scorned? We 
 must be logical. 
 
 The opinion of physicians as to the phys- 
 iological result of continence is varied. 
 While there are those who advocate indulg- 
 ence without regard to the moral aspect of 
 the question, and prescribe intercourse as a 
 hygenic measure, there are many others 
 who take an opposite view of the matter. 
 So well known an authority as Dr. Acton 
 says: "My own opinion is, that where, as 
 is the case with a very large number, a 
 young man's education has been properly 
 watched, and his mind has not been de- 
 based by vile practices, it is usually a com- 
 paratively easy task to be continent, and 
 requires no great or extraordinary effort, 
 and every year of voluntary effort at chastity
 
 196 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 renders the task easier by force of habit. 
 That it is an easy task to be continent is 
 only true of those who have been compar- 
 atively pure in thought word and deed." 
 And again, referring to cases of so-called 
 suffering from continence he continues: "If, 
 instead of gratifying his inclinations, the 
 young patient should consult a conscientious 
 medical man, he would probably be told, 
 and the result would soon prove the cor- 
 rectness of the advice given, that low diet, 
 partial abstinence from meat and stimulants, 
 aperient medicine, if necessary, gymnastic 
 exercises and self-control will most effective- 
 ly relieve the symptoms. The truth is that 
 most people and especially the young, are 
 often only too glad to find an excuse for 
 indulging their animal propensities, instead 
 of endeavoring to regulate or control them. 
 I have not a doubt that this sexual suffer- 
 ing is often much exaggerated, if not in- 
 vented, for this purpose." 
 
 Dr. Austin Flint, the elder, whom no one 
 will accuse of being influenced by sentimen- 
 tal or religious prejudice, gives it as his 
 opinion and the result of his experience 
 that chastity is not and cannot be a cause 
 of disease. He says: "The physician is
 
 THE RATIONALE OF CELIBACY 197 
 
 sometimes appealed to by unmarried per- 
 sons, and married persons debarred, for 
 various reasons, from maritial intercourse, 
 to sanction illicit indulgence, on the score 
 of health. It would be out of place to con- 
 sider here this topic in its moral aspects, 
 but they are by no means to be lost sight 
 of by the physician. Irrespective of these, 
 in view of the fact that inactivity of the 
 generative organs can never be considered 
 as a cause of disease, and also of the fact 
 that as a rule, the functional power of these 
 organs is not lost by being held in abeyance, 
 he is not justified in giving his professional 
 approval to fornication as a hygienic meas- 
 ure."* 
 
 To one who looks at the matter from an 
 impersonal standpoint the contention that 
 the existence of a class of fallen women 
 furnishes a safeguard for the purity of our 
 sisters and daughters is a disgraceful argu- 
 ment. Why should another woman's daugh- 
 ter be sacrificed to protect mine? And if 
 it is necessary that a woman's virtue be sac- 
 rificed, if it is essential to man's health that 
 some woman be disgraced and outlawed 
 
 *From "A Treatise on the Principles and Practice of Medi- 
 cine for the use of Practitioners and Students of Medicine," by 
 Austin Flint. Henry C. Lea, Phila., 1873.
 
 198 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 why not my daughter as well as another's? 
 By what right should one woman's wealth, 
 virtue or reputation be considered rather 
 than another's?* 
 
 Disregarding the moral aspect of the ques- 
 tion, we must ask of pure men, are you 
 willing that your babies run the chance of 
 contracting a loathsome and incurable com- 
 plaint from the chance kiss of a servant; 
 your innocent wives run the chance of be- 
 coming infected in consequence of a mom- 
 ent spend in a public toilet-room, your own 
 bodies become a prey to untold horror from 
 the touch of a loose-living man ? Truly we 
 are strangely constituted if we are content 
 to permit this "necessary evil" while any 
 effort on our part can prevent or lessen it. 
 
 There is a prevalent idea that the prosti- 
 tute chooses her profession from an inher- 
 ent voluptousness, because that is the life 
 that alone is attractive to her. This is the 
 case with a very small minority. It is a 
 question of industrial distress, of supply and 
 demand; it is the question of man's unbridled 
 licentiousness and woman's need of subsis- 
 tence. The horrible army is recruited largely 
 
 *See Helen Gardeners "Pray you, Sir, Whose Daughter?" 
 Fenno & Co. New York.
 
 THE RATIONALE OF CELIBACY 199 
 
 from the ranks of the servant, seamstress, 
 and dressmaker, the two latter classes con- 
 taining many women who have struggled 
 vainly to keep body and soul together on 
 the pittance they are able to earn. Bad 
 food, arduous labor, and a total lack of reas- 
 onable amusement, are not conducive to 
 moral strength; the brave go on struggling, 
 and starve; the weak give up the fight, and 
 choose a few years of ignominy and idle- 
 ness before they fall into early and dishon- 
 ored graves. If a reasonable means of hon- 
 est subsistance were offered to all unsup- 
 ported women today, and if men cared to 
 be purer, there would not be a hundred 
 prostitutes where now there are a thousand 
 to be a menace and a shame to our civil- 
 ization. 
 
 It is a disgrace to our latter-day living 
 that the young women who are striving to 
 earn their living in our large cities should 
 be perpetually fighting a moral battle be- 
 cause of insufficient salary and contiguous 
 temptation. In more than one of the large 
 departmental stores in New York City, 
 when a young girl expostulates at the ne- 
 cessity of living upon the sum of $5. a 
 week, she is given to understand that if she
 
 200 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 considers her salary insufficient she will 
 probably find some young man in the store 
 who will act as her friend and supplement 
 her income. 
 
 Picture a young woman standing all day 
 long behind a counter, attending to the 
 wants of customers from daylight to dark, in 
 an attitude that is most trying to a woman 
 and most conducive to feminine weakness, 
 and remember that, in an average case, she 
 has but 72 cents a day to pay for room, 
 food, dress, carfare, and any pleasure that 
 her poor little soul may crave. 
 
 The Consumer's League is striving hard 
 to better conditions, to require the obvious 
 justice that a man and a woman doing the 
 same work and observing the same hours 
 shall receive the same remuneration; that ex- 
 tra money shall be paid for extra time, and 
 so forth. We would urge upon thinking 
 women, who have realized the fact that all 
 industrial conditions are regulated by the 
 consumer, to join this band of noble women 
 and help on their work. In passing, it may 
 be well to remind the women of our country 
 that when they hunt about the shops for 
 bargains, and finally purchase a 39 cent shirt 
 waist or a 79 cent child's suit they are sup-
 
 THE RATIONALE OF CELIBACY 2OI 
 
 porting, maintaining, and encouraging the 
 sweat shop, that blot on our economic and 
 social conditions. 
 
 It requires no religious fanatic to point 
 out the deadly nature of the evil of prosti- 
 tution; common sense and a decent regard 
 for moral law and physical well-being are 
 all that is needed. Let woman adopt a high 
 standard, and man must conform to it; if 
 women universally require purity in a hus- 
 band it will perforce be granted. Let phy- 
 sicians tell the truth; let them cease their 
 lying fables, and speak without fear of con- 
 sequence, and a glad posterity will be the 
 result. 
 
 It is not our pleasure to dwell upon hor- 
 rors. Happily for our race and for our 
 homes there are high-souled men and wom- 
 en, pure men and boys, maidens and matrons 
 of sweet innocence and wholesome knowl- 
 edge. To the young man who has passed 
 physically unscathed through the stormy 
 years of adolescence and early manhood, 
 we owe glad recognition; mentally un- 
 scathed, in these days of evil communication 
 and filthy jesting, he can scarcely hope to 
 be. Let him inaugurate a new practice in 
 this regard, set his face strenuously against
 
 202 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 the recital of any tales which he would not 
 allow by his own fireside, comment with 
 an indignant protest instead of a silent ac- 
 quiescence, and much may be accomplished 
 in the direction of social reformation. 
 
 Stimulate the imagination and the body 
 will usually respond; look after the mind, 
 guard it from thoughts of evil, and there 
 will be small question of fighting the flesh. 
 
 An unwedded life can only be justified 
 in a mature man today, as in men and 
 women in the future of mutual frankness 
 and mutual choice, by extraordinary mental 
 production. The world will always have its 
 men and women of genius, 'its exceptional 
 ones, whose disregard of law may be tolera- 
 ted by her; but to all others she is inex- 
 orable. 
 
 And if the heredity-weighted individual, 
 clinging to earth's physical joys, is brought 
 face to face with the unbending decision 
 of life-long celibacy as punishment for the 
 sins of one who is now "a mouldering bag 
 of bones in a coffin'' as Mr. Conan Doyle 
 puts it in one of his striking "Round the 
 Red Lamp" stories, such a one can but 
 quietly accept his doom, and bow to the 
 power that is greater than he. A harsh sen-
 
 THE RATIONALE OF CELIBACY 203 
 
 tence, truly, yet the inevitable result of the 
 law under which we exist today. Can we 
 not conceive of ourselves as able to rise 
 above the personal in our dealings with life, 
 to look to the good of the greater number 
 rather than to individual joy, to recognize 
 our personal individuality as but one note, 
 and by our effort a tuneful one, in the vast 
 harmony of life? 
 
 The ignorance, carelessness and diffidence 
 of parents and family physicians cause 
 many of our boys to fall victims to the in- 
 geniously-worded advertisements of the 
 quack. Frightened by nocturnal emissions 
 and anxious to understand the cause, they 
 readily accept the alarming suggestions of 
 money-making charlatans, and consume nos- 
 trums in secret to avoid the condition of 
 impotence and disease that has been pic- 
 tured to them. Not only so, but the very 
 fear that possesses them contributes to ag- 
 gravate the condition, and causes, in many 
 cases, melancholy and misery. What un- 
 necessary suffering, when a few healthy 
 words from a sensible father, an explana- 
 tion of nature's methods of periodic relief, 
 a reassurance as to the harmlessness of these 
 occasional occurrances, with a word of ad-
 
 204 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 vice as to a healthy condition of mind and 
 body lest they become unduly frequent would 
 set the boy's mind at rest and prevent him 
 from filling his stomach with harmful drugs. 
 
 Our boys have enough to fight in their 
 own natures, during the trying period of ad- 
 olescence; it will be to our eternal shame 
 if we allow them to fight in fear and ig- 
 norance; with all our help and wisdom we 
 cannot take away the tremendous impulses 
 of puberty, we would not if we could. But 
 to impart the truth is our direct duty, to 
 give the needed advice and direction should 
 be our greatest joy. How is it then that 
 young men are left to glean their informa- 
 tion as to the use of the sexual function 
 through illicit practical experience and the 
 careless advice of boon companions, or be 
 driven, in sensitive fear, to the sensational 
 advertisement and the quack practitioner. 
 
 A damnable trade in the innocence of our 
 young men is prosecuted in secret; printed 
 and typewritten books are disseminated 
 among school boys that are calculated to 
 do untold harm. In spite of the vigorous 
 efforts of the Society for the Suppression 
 of Vice this traffic still continues, its per- 
 petrators are lost to all sense of decency or
 
 THE RATIONALE OF CELIBACY 205 
 
 respect for innocence; and the promulgation 
 of this vicious literature is almost invari- 
 ably followed by offers of appliances for 
 immoral purposes. 
 
 A typewritten manuscript which was 
 handed to the writer a few months ago had 
 been taken from a lad of seventeen. It 
 was the most thoroughly demoralizing and 
 seductive matter that can be imagined. It 
 would be impossible for any young man to 
 read such pages and to retain his virtue. It 
 had been written, evidently, by a man of 
 experience, and power of expression; it was 
 not crude, nor vulgar, in the sense of being 
 repulsive; therein lay its awful attractive- 
 ness to the emotional nature of the young; 
 and the scenes that it depicted were inten- 
 tional exaggerations of possible intimacies 
 calculated to rouse, in the ignorant and 
 easily stimulated imagination of youth, pas- 
 sions that must find an outlet in some form 
 of sexual sin. 
 
 Those who have money and time should 
 give all the aid possible to the over-worked 
 and tireless guardians of the purity of our 
 young people; that this abominable indus- 
 try may be speedily checked, and our sons 
 aided in the path of rectitude.
 
 2O6 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 It is not generally known to women that 
 the laws with regard to the protection of 
 girlhood in the majority of our states are 
 not such as should appeal to the justice or 
 morality of thinking people. The facts are 
 as follows: a girl is held by the law as 
 able to understand the significance of the 
 act, and to willingly consent to her own 
 seduction at 16 years of age in Ala., 15 in 
 Iowa and Neb.; 14 in Ariz., Conn., Ga., 
 111., Ind., N. Mex., Vt., Wis.; 12 in Ind.Ter. 
 (for Indians), Ky., Nev., Va., W. Va., 10 
 Miss., N. C., and S. C. This means that a 
 man who, in any manner, has compassed 
 the seduction of a girl, is in the eyes of the 
 law unblamable if the girl is of the age as 
 given above; children of ten, twelve or 
 fourteen years being presumed by law to 
 be capable of protecting their own innocence 
 and of duly estimating the cost of their ac- 
 tions in regard to their reputations and fu- 
 ture. The disgraceful injustice of such an 
 assumption should be evident to all, and, be- 
 ing evident, there should be such definite 
 and concerted action as should result in the 
 raising of the age of consent in all states to 
 that of eighteen years, as is the law in New 
 York, Col., Fla., Idaho, Mich., N. J., Utah, 
 Wash., and Wyo.
 
 MARRIAGE ACTUAL AND IDEAL 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 E have sacrificed a good deal 
 in the attainment of our twen- 
 tieth century civilization; we 
 have multiplied laws and for- 
 gotten, perhaps, something of 
 a natural honor and chivalry; 
 we have won gold and lost the appreciation 
 of the things that gold can purchase; we 
 have surfeited ourselves with physical 
 sweets and lost the old savage delight in 
 them; we have reared mighty temples and 
 sacrificed ourselves "mid their ponderous 
 vaults and arches." 
 
 Laying aside all personal prejudice in 
 favor of existing ordinances, and the nat- 
 ural, because wished-for content with the 
 thing that we have, as a nation and a world, 
 brought upon ourselves, let us bravely face 
 the question: "Is marriage, as it is today, 
 albeit an improvement on the unions of the 
 past, a great, a satisfactory, a beautiful 
 thing?"
 
 2O8 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 We are obliged to admit that it is not. 
 
 The happy marriage, the union for life 
 of a man and a woman who are physically 
 and mentally fitted for each other, the per- 
 fect content of absolute comradeship, and 
 understanding intercourse; the union that is 
 without fault-finding and personal recrimina- 
 tion; the union that means perfect satisfac- 
 tion for the two who compose it, in an ex- 
 ception that usually calls for wondering 
 surprise and envy. 
 
 The cause of this state of things is not 
 far to seek. Young men and women, un- 
 prepared by experience or instruction to dis- 
 tinguish the false from the true, almost 
 ignorant of their own needs and possibilities, 
 take a marriage partner with as little thought 
 as if the matter were a play. With the 
 young man the passion of the time throws 
 a glamour over such important defects in 
 the loved one as physical ill-health, men- 
 tal weakness and frivolity, and a narrow 
 view of life; with the girl, over a selfish 
 usurping nature, a pleasure-loving, easy 
 morality, or utter incompatibility of tastes 
 and thought. They enter upon a condition 
 which requires the tenderest tact, a supreme 
 unselfishness, the most careful study of con-
 
 MARRIAGE ACTUAL AND IDEAL 209 
 
 ditions, with no better equipment, in many 
 cases, than a passing sex-attraction that 
 wanes with the honeymoon. 
 
 The agony of disenchantment, the shat- 
 tering of the idol whose perfections had 
 been but creations of the imagination, the 
 awful realization that the deed is irrevoc- 
 able, these are the things that mark the 
 faces of women with unyouthful lines, that 
 drive a man to sullen acceptance of an un- 
 interesting situation, and to surruptitious 
 excursions, as the years go by, in search 
 of something more congenial. The unfor- 
 tunate pair, seeing no escape from a condi- 
 tion which, as law and society remind them, 
 they have brought upon themselves, and 
 must perforce, submit to, settle down into 
 a dull, monotonous round of life together, 
 the woman a passive slave to circumstances, 
 and a tamed animal in a physical sense, and 
 the man with the old property feeling the 
 only tie left to bind him to the woman he 
 desired in the old days; still using her as 
 a means of physical gratification, but other- 
 wise taking little or no interest in the one 
 who should have been to him the comple- 
 tion of his existence, and the joy of his days. 
 
 This is the black side of the picture, but
 
 2IO WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 in many cases it is not a false one. There 
 is no doubt that the children, if such come, 
 are a bond of sympathy to a greater or 
 less extent, and parents who have become 
 utterly indifferent to each other personally, 
 have, with the interests of the children as 
 a common ground of alliance, accepted 
 the situation as gracefully as circumstances 
 would allow, and maintained an outward 
 appearance of contentment with a mental 
 shrug of the shoulders at Fate. 
 
 Perfection is a thing as yet impossible 
 to the sons and daughters of men, and if 
 the fact were realized by the youth of the 
 day, it would save many bruising falls from 
 the heights. To expect faults and imper- 
 fections, a dash of brutality, perchance, on 
 the one side, a touch of feminine vanity on 
 the other, or even things more significant 
 and serious, would be wise; thorough 
 knowledge of human nature would pre- 
 vent really inconspicuous details of char- 
 acter from assuming the importance of a 
 tragedy. 
 
 I see a mental picture of a four-weeks' 
 bride; she stands gazing at herself in the 
 mirror, a reflection of a woman with a 
 white face and dark-rimmed eyes. She
 
 MARRIAGE ACTUAL AND IDEAL 211 
 
 has not fled to her room in a passion of 
 rage that might subside as quickly as it 
 came, she has moved there slowly, and is 
 suspiciously calm. In a moment's over- 
 whelming conviction of her powerlessness, 
 and the futility of speech, she clenches 
 her hands, and sobs: 
 
 " O God, O God, I have made a mis- 
 take ! " But there are no tears. 
 
 " A mistake ; but mistakes can be recti- 
 fied." Her inner self speaks. 
 
 But the Society self, the soul of long- 
 established conventions answers : 
 
 "Not such as these; it was for life that 
 you undertook this responsibility." 
 
 " But I did not know, did not under- 
 stand " 
 
 " No matter, you must pay the penalty." 
 
 " My whole life is before me ; I want a 
 mate; I want happiness." 
 
 "You must do without these. That is 
 the consequence of your mistake." 
 
 " But he is hateful to me." 
 
 " No matter. You have no alternative ; 
 make the best of him, smother your am- 
 bitions and desires, minister to his com- 
 fort. Has he erred ? " 
 
 "No, no, oh, I am weary, he is as he
 
 212 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 TV as, I suppose, as he will be God help 
 me always, always. But he is not for 
 me. I know it. I am not for him. Must 
 we be tied to each other for ever?" 
 
 " Till Death us do part, till death us do 
 part." 
 
 Yet, says someone, the woman probably 
 settled down into a good, every-day wife, 
 much as other wives. Perhaps; but surely 
 that but intensifies the pathos of the situ- 
 ation. A high-souled woman reduced to 
 an automaton, a passionate woman daily 
 subject to embraces that give her no 
 pleasure, that perhaps fill her with loath- 
 ing, a mind which suitable comradeship 
 and devoted love would have made to 
 blossom as the rose, reduced to the com- 
 mon level of the ordinary lesser half of 
 the marriage total! 
 
 What do the average inexperienced young 
 man and woman know of Love, the great, 
 the ideal, the thing that overtops and over- 
 powers all the other constituents of life, 
 that dawns, a mighty passion, that grows, 
 a great absorbing power, that dwells eter- 
 nally among the essential verities, the thing 
 that knows not time nor distance, dismay 
 nor death?
 
 MARRIAGE ACTUAL AND IDEAL 213 
 
 They find each a sweet playmate, they 
 feel the sex-impulse stir within them, 
 this is love, they cry, let us be united. And 
 so two ignorant, impulsive young people, 
 with, perhaps, not one of the complemen- 
 tal graces or qualifications for continued 
 intercourse or durable affection are tied 
 together, with merry friends and dignified 
 clergy to grace the ceremony, and Fate, 
 an unbidden guest, smiling a grim and 
 ironical benediction. 
 
 In many cases when a husband has given 
 just cause for divorce, and a long-suffering 
 woman might, without the fear of social 
 odium, free herself from a hateful bond, 
 the barrier of monetary dependence stands 
 between her and freedom. 
 
 The old stigma that attached itself to a 
 divorced person, even when his or her posi- 
 tion was one of absolute innocence, is 
 almost a thing of the past, and the old 
 argument for the preservation of an intol- 
 erable tie for the sake of the children, has 
 today little potency. No sensible person 
 has any feeling save one of pity, either for 
 the guiltless party in a case of divorce, or for 
 the children whose home has been broken 
 up through the moral weakness of a parent.
 
 214 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 To the conventionally-trained, average 
 man and woman of society, Divorce has 
 an ugly sound, there is no question. And 
 yet may it not be that this argues a want 
 of thought on our part, a lack of apprecia- 
 tion of the definite needs of the race? 
 
 No law that has ever been made can 
 justify the mental and physical martyrdom 
 involved in the living together of a man 
 and woman who are thoroughly incompat- 
 ible; and the sooner we alter the dictum 
 of society in this regard, and make of mar- 
 riage a freer, saner thing, the more quickly 
 shall we advance individually and racially. 
 
 True marriage can only exist because of 
 a real, honest, healthy, passionate love, the 
 desire for exclusive union with the ob- 
 ject of devotion; it is, therefore, an absurd 
 and harmful system that would lower the 
 tone of marriage and make of the relation 
 the cringing, hateful, insufficient thing that 
 present laws and customs have conspired 
 to render it. 
 
 Is it fair to punish two people with life- 
 long bondage, whose only crime has been 
 a lack of experience? What do a young 
 man and woman, especially if they have 
 been pure, know of even their -physical
 
 MARRIAGE ACTUAL AND IDEAL 215 
 
 power to charm and satisfy? I would look 
 further than the two primary sufferers, and 
 ask, is it wise in the interests of the race 
 to allow the procreation of children to an 
 incompatible, unloving pair? 
 
 Can we not look at this question with a 
 single eye for the good of humanity, for 
 the needs of the race, for the true devel- 
 opment of the individual? 
 
 If monogomy be the highest and the ulti- 
 mate in our social system, and, ethically 
 speaking, it would certainly seem so, are 
 the violators of this law social criminals, 
 or is there some error in the present work- 
 ing of the system? This question has an 
 obvious bearing on the subject we are dis- 
 cussing. Is divorce, the bugbear of the 
 churchman, a friend or a foe ? Is it the in- 
 sidious enemy that disintegrates the home 
 or is it the loosener of ties which should 
 never have been made; 'is it and here is 
 the point I wish to make, inimical to the 
 well-being of possible offspring, or favorable 
 to a high character of citizenship? On the 
 one hand it is obvious, and may readily be 
 conceded that the loss of a parent, motherly 
 care or fatherly interest, is a serious lack 
 in a child's life: but the question must be
 
 2l6 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 faced, whether the motherly care or the 
 fatherly interest, plus perpetual bickerings 
 or unuttered but recognized contempt or 
 dislike, will contribute to the ultimate good 
 of the child or children in question. Not 
 only so and here enters in a fundamental 
 and most important consideration what of 
 the children who are conceived and born 
 under these conditions? Are they likely to 
 make upright, happy, useful men and wom- 
 en, satisfactory and well-living citizens? 
 
 I continually have such instances brought 
 under my notice as the following. A wom- 
 an whose lady-like mother (I may say in 
 parenthesis) had considered it indelicate, 
 or been herself too ignorant to explain to 
 her daughter the possibility of distinguish- 
 ing between a mere passing sex-attraction 
 and the love that will endure this woman 
 married a man with whom she was infatu- 
 ated. In less than a month she realized 
 that she had made a mistake, that her idol 
 was of the basest of common clay, utterly 
 unsuited to her, and uncongenial ; she dread- 
 ed his approach, and loathed his embraces. 
 I would ask the vigorous opponent of di- 
 vorce, what he would advise in such a case 
 as this. The cutting of a bond that should
 
 MARRIAGE ACTUAL AND IDEAL 217 
 
 never have been tied, or what actually oc- 
 curred as a result of religious and social 
 pressure; the woman lived her life along- 
 side of the man whom she despised and 
 hated, until death finally relieved her of her 
 burden. She bore him several children, all 
 of whom were abnormal, one a dissipated 
 and irresponsible blackguard, one a miser- 
 able, discontented, unhappy girl, of no use 
 to herself or anyone else, the other morally 
 oblique from his birth. Which, in such a 
 case as this, presents an aspect of the 
 greater evil? I hear the enemy of divorce 
 suggest a third alternative a separation giv- 
 ing to both parties no right of remarriage. 
 This is, to my thinking, a pernicious sub- 
 stitute. 
 
 Would the man, think you, remain a celi- 
 bate because the law refused him marriage ? 
 It is scarcely worth while to raise the ques- 
 tion. Is the woman to be denied her right 
 to maternity, and live a life of loneliness 
 because of an error of judgment? 
 
 Whatever may be the opinion of the up- 
 holders of this stern doctrine, it is to me 
 an unnatural and an unpractical one. 
 
 That woman might be the most desirable 
 of mothers, and raise sturdy, honorable sons
 
 2l8 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 and daughters to the man she respected and 
 loved; and to shut her out from any such 
 possibility because of a girlish mistake, 
 made in consequence, most probably, of 
 the criminal ignorance of her natural in- 
 structors, seems to me to be not to con- 
 sider the individual at all a foolish and 
 wasteful social act. 
 
 To the careful student of such matters, 
 the woman referred to committed an un- 
 justifiable act in the interest of social eco- 
 nomics, in bearing undesired children, 
 which were begotten in lust, presumably, 
 and reared in an atmosphere of unrest and 
 discontent. 
 
 No woman has a right to bear children 
 who are not the offspring of love, and the 
 sooner that economic or social pressure that 
 would tend to make her commit such an 
 unjustifiable social act is removed the sooner 
 shall we have the men and women, the 
 citizens of integrity and ability that the 
 world needs. 
 
 Granting the happy mating of the two 
 individuals, there is yet much which re- 
 mains to be done, although undoubtedly the 
 most important thing is already accom- 
 plished. A strong, passionate, self-respect-
 
 MARRIAGE ACTUAL AND IDEAL 2 19 
 
 ing love, that has in it the elements of per- 
 manence, is without question the best and 
 most essential preparation for parenthood. 
 
 On one occasion I was asked the ques- 
 tion "What is Love?" and the questioner 
 defied me to intelligently and definitely ex- 
 plain it. It is not an easy thing to define, 
 containing as it does certain transcendental 
 and psychological elements that render it 
 too elusive for mere wording. 
 
 On the spur of the moment I illustrated my 
 thought as to Love with a pencil and paper, 
 and I here reproduce that idea. It is crudely 
 conceived, but may serve as a suggestion. 
 
 Desire we share with the other animals, 
 a mere physical hunger, corresponding to 
 the hunger for food ; where the second point 
 is reached we get Passion, which is Desire 
 plus elements of power and beauty that 
 make of it a grander and a human thing; 
 and love, farthest beyond, the ultimate, 
 is desire, plus passion, plus unselfishness.
 
 22O WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 Where the mighty, wonderful passion sub- 
 ordinates self to the object of affection, we 
 have Love, the enduring, the beautiful, the 
 self-sacrificing, the ennobling. This love 
 should be the starting point, the heritage of 
 every human child. In-so-far as it is not, 
 and in-so-much as a new life lacks this, 
 its rightful heritage, and is the chance out- 
 come of idleness, caprice, or animality, in- 
 so-far are we false to a trust, unequal to 
 our responsibility and unfit for the posi- 
 tion which we recklessly and inconsider- 
 ately fill. We still have to face that relic of 
 past barbarism, the sexual subserviency of 
 woman ; we shall have it to face, in some 
 form or another, and to some extent, so 
 long as woman is financially dependent. 
 An obvious step towards the evolution of 
 the fearless, self-respecting woman, is the 
 education of girls to be self-supporting, and 
 the training in them of sound physical or- 
 ganisms and developed mentality. Given 
 this, and some form of maternal insurance, 
 no woman would be forced into a position 
 of marital subserviency; and a healthier, 
 sturdier, happier offspring would be the 
 result. 
 
 I am not speaking in the interest of the
 
 MARRIAGE ACTUAL AND IDEAL 221 
 
 woman; it would be more comfortable for 
 the woman to continue to be a pet and a 
 plaything, to be guarded and tutored and 
 taken care of; but such conditions are in- 
 imical to the best interests of the race. 
 Great sons are not born of subject mothers, 
 and since, by the law of cross heredity, the 
 sons are more likely to inherit maternal 
 characteristics, it is to the interest of every 
 man to cultivate and encourage in his wife 
 elements of bravery, of self-respect, of in- 
 dependence of character. 
 
 Every normal woman desires children by 
 the man she loves ; and it is a crying evil, 
 and a social blunder that our asylums and 
 sanitariums should be filled with women 
 whose thwarted desires in this direction 
 have been the cause of their condition, while 
 the brothel thrives, and houses of assigna- 
 tion are found on almost every street of 
 our large cities. 
 
 In the larger sight and broader thought 
 of the new century, can we not see a wiser, 
 because a more tolerant, social system, may 
 we not foretell a time when the marriage 
 of a man and a woman will be to a large 
 extent a matter of personal private con- 
 science; when the severance of the tie, if
 
 222 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 it be necessary, will be attended with no 
 fears of legal punishment, or of social os- 
 tracism; when the word "bond" shall have 
 disappeared from such relationship, and the 
 union be one of pure mutual need, of 
 happy companionship? 
 
 Is it not an insult to the intelligence and 
 right feeling of men and women to premise 
 that it is legal pressure alone that pre- 
 serves order and decency in the marriage 
 relation? Suppose the relation were made 
 more free, a matter of private arbitrament, 
 would that necessarily imply added care- 
 lessness in the making of ties, unlimited 
 license, a moral chaos? Such a conclusion 
 would be not only an affront to womanhood, 
 but an unjustifiable and uncalled-for dispar- 
 agement of the minds and moral sense of 
 men and women. Is it law solely that pre- 
 vents us all from being thieves ? 
 
 The sense of moral obligation that would 
 preserve a man from crime, even in a 
 community that existed without definite 
 punitive enactments, would also restrain 
 him in other moral temptations, and more 
 especially in the case of a deed involving 
 such far-reaching consequences. There is 
 no man, however base, with whom the
 
 MARRIAGE ACTUAL AND IDEAL 223 
 
 thought of responsibility for a new exis- 
 tence does not weigh to a greater or less 
 extent; in many cases there is a strong and 
 involuntary shrinking from the possibilities 
 of paternity. An instinctive dread of an 
 accountability for his offspring is inherent 
 in the average man. And if this be the case 
 with the less conscientious and less impli- 
 cated sex, what of the other? Can we, with 
 any show of reason, think of a woman as 
 likely to act with carelessness or indifference 
 in a matter so vital to herself and to the 
 children who are dearer to her than her own 
 existence? If to woman were left the ulti- 
 mate decision in matters sexual, if the man 
 looked to her intuitive feeling as a guide, 
 he would make fewer and less grievous 
 mistakes. 
 
 As compensation for her less logical and 
 less incisive turn of mind, woman has been 
 given a more delicate perception, an innate 
 appreciation of family and race needs that 
 is lacking in the man. She instinctively 
 rejects what is hurtful to her offspring; her 
 instincts are primal. 
 
 And there can be no doubt that, were 
 present custom reversed, and the choice of 
 a life partner left in the hands of a woman,
 
 224 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 the change would result in a finer order of 
 beings, physically and intellectually. Al- 
 though a reversal to primitive times in this 
 regard may not readily obtain, nor indeed be 
 practicable under existing conditions, we 
 must perforce do our part to hasten an era 
 of more rational thought and practice. 
 
 At the present day the matrimonial sit- 
 uation is farcical. A girl is supposed, until 
 such time as a man, looking upon her with 
 favor, sees fit to tell her so, to be a creat- 
 ure without eyes, heart, or sex; she does 
 not dream of the possibility that he may 
 ask for her love until the words are fairly 
 out of his mouth; she receives his words 
 of passion with a blushing astonishment, 
 but apparently, by some work of magic sud- 
 denly discovers that there is something in 
 her feeling that corresponds to his. Even 
 when the bargain is struck, and the wed- 
 ding trousseau is being prepared, she may 
 not think of marriage or of what it implies, 
 except in the jvaguest way. 
 
 Where the wedding tour is to be is a 
 legitimate subject for thought and discus- 
 sion; the walls and furniture of the future 
 home may profitably be dwelt upon; but of 
 the most important element of the new life,
 
 MARRIAGE ACTUAL AND IDEAL 225 
 
 of the near, tender, wonderful relationship 
 that is to alter her whole trend of life and 
 thought, the vital, essential, significant fac- 
 tor in the new life, that is the thing which 
 a "nice-minded" girl is expected to ignore. 
 To think of what marriage implies before 
 such marriage is consummated, would be 
 the height of indelicacy. 
 
 Only a few degrees less improper would 
 have been the evincing of a preference for 
 the man before he had made an open a- 
 vowal of love. 
 
 What an obvious absurdity, and yet one 
 about which the clouds of social tradition 
 still resolutely wrap themselves. 
 
 Can we not conceive of a happier union, 
 based upon honesty and good faith, rather 
 than upon pretense and shallow ignorance; 
 where frankness is the starting point, and 
 a happy recognition of mutual needs joined 
 to a sound knowledge, the glad wayfaring, 
 where a woman may show her inclination 
 and desires as openly as a man, without fear 
 of misconstruction, and where society will 
 recognize that by furthering such methods 
 its interests will be the better served? 
 
 Society will have to undergo some trans- 
 formation, certainly, before it will be pos-
 
 226 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 sible for a woman fearlessly and without 
 reserve to seek out a man who pleases her 
 soul and sense, who by his physical and 
 mental eminence would seem a worthy fa- 
 ther of her children. Yet if the change of 
 view and intention be desirable, we will some 
 day attain to it, and to that end we will 
 continue to energize and agitate till an effete 
 and inefficient custom sets to work, perforce, 
 to sew its own shroud. 
 
 Does it not follow as a matter of course 
 that with the desire to find favor in the 
 discriminating eyes of the mothers of the 
 race would come to the man an accordant 
 improvement in habits and life, that the 
 feverish desire to conserve her beauty, as 
 evinced by the unmarried woman of today, 
 would find its counterpart in the strong 
 effort to preserve and intensify the physical 
 perfection of a man's youth, and his cor- 
 responding mental and moral health? 
 
 Founding our marriage, then, on a firmer 
 and more enduring basis, and one which 
 furthers at once individual and universal 
 interests, we would fain have the years that 
 follow regulated by a similar standard of 
 honesty, good sense, and personal indepen- 
 dence. The old property interest in the wife
 
 MARRIAGE ACTUAL AND IDEAL 227 
 
 being gone, the man and woman standing 
 on the level ground of a common interest 
 and a common responsibility, the old sub- 
 mission and coercion would also become 
 things of the past. Compliance, concession, 
 self-denial, would still exist, as it is inevit- 
 able in every companionship of two dis- 
 similar beings; but it would be a mutual 
 conformity. 
 
 As between soul and body, so between 
 husband and wife there must be the abso- 
 lute harmony that is the result of personal 
 liberty and equal rights, if there is to be 
 the beauty of a perfect union. 
 
 Liberty of outside, individual (friendships, 
 liberty of free coming and going, liberty 
 of complete possession of their own bodies, 
 these follow as a natural consequence. The 
 marital act, no longer insisted upon as a 
 right, nor prostituted into a more or less 
 automatic and impassionate observance, will 
 be a mutual sweet delight; the call of the 
 mate, the glad response; such a physical 
 union will be the ideal prelude to the con- 
 ception of the sons and daughters of the 
 new era. 
 
 It may be said, without much fear of con- 
 tradiction, that the vulgarization of marriage
 
 228 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 is the death of love. The romance of the 
 relationship must be preserved at all costs, 
 or joy will die, as the fresh seed decays 
 in a season of perpetual rain. 
 
 A wise man or woman will always main- 
 tain a certain aloofness even in the midst 
 of the greatest exuberance of affection; 
 give the true impression that there is some- 
 thing in reserve, an underlying grace or 
 sweetness that lies back even of the present 
 happiness. 
 
 In a woman's nature, especially, there is 
 the strong temptation to give too lavishly, 
 to keep nothing for the furture; and in 
 many cases she cannot understand how, 
 such giving becomes satiating, even nause- 
 ating to a robust man. Her delicate arts, 
 like the sweet coquetries of her sister, the 
 bird, were given to her to use; she can make 
 herself irresistably fascinating to her hus- 
 dand until old age surprises them in the 
 midst of youthful raptures. Old age does 
 not necessarily run away with the pleasures 
 of those who are whole and sane; the heart 
 and the senses do not age with the face, 
 and the joys of physical possession need 
 not end with the fulfilment of the three- 
 score years and ten.
 
 MARRIAGE ACTUAL AND IDEAL 229 
 
 A reasonable jealousy for the preserva- 
 tion of the fascination and sweets of marital 
 intercourse would suggest separate sleeping- 
 apartments. The idea has been so vigorously 
 attacked by members of the old social 
 school that a word may, very properly, be 
 said in reply. 
 
 In the first place, physicians universally 
 concur in the opinion that it is inadvisable 
 and unhygienic for two persons to occupy 
 the same bed. Without going into a de- 
 tailed explanation of the reasons for this 
 thought, I would simply state that number- 
 less cases are known where the stronger of 
 the two bedfellows sapped the strength of 
 the weaker, appropriating, with his more 
 vigorous constitution, more than his share 
 of the life-giving properties of the air, and, 
 in some as yet unexplained way, vampiris- 
 ing the weaker organism. 
 
 The truth of this has been so generally 
 recognised that it is rare to find, as was 
 common in past days, a home where the 
 child of the family is allowed to be the 
 sleeping-partner of the aunt or grandmother. 
 
 The plea most often urged in favor of 
 the double-bed arrangement is of a two- 
 fold character; it refers first to the sense of
 
 230 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 personal security, on the part of the wife, 
 in the nearness of a strong man; and second, 
 to the sweet affectionateness of the situation. 
 
 In reply I would argue for a more vigor- 
 ous and healthy mind and body on the part 
 of the woman; that she may be a prey to 
 terrors neither of ghosts nor burglars; a 
 valorous and intrepid spirit is quite com- 
 patible with a strictly feminine nature. 
 
 In answer to the second division of the 
 argument I would suggest that the occupy- 
 ing of separate sleeping apartments does 
 not necessarily imply total banishment of 
 the other half of the marriage entity; while 
 asleep the question of companionship is 
 immaterial, and there is no reasonable ob- 
 jection that I can see, to pre-dormial or 
 ante-dormial hospitality. 
 
 The point is the preservation of all the 
 beauty pertaining to the relationship of the 
 sexes; individual possibilities will determine 
 the method. 
 
 And here I must reiterate that, if there 
 is to be a.determining power as to the times 
 and seasons of sexual intimacy the choice 
 should lie with the woman. Her responsi- 
 bility is greater, therefore she should have 
 greater freedom; the consequences and de-
 
 MARRIAGE ACTUAL AND IDEAL 23! 
 
 terminations rest upon her, therefore she 
 should direct the cause. 
 
 In the ideal alliance, as before hinted, 
 there is no / and you, no "my way" and 
 "your way;" and the coming together of 
 two who love should be as instinctive and 
 natural as the spring mating of the thrushes. 
 
 The refinement of married life is made 
 up of small attentions. Many a woman, 
 eagerly desirous of being a devoted wife 
 has made the fatal mistake, in the early 
 days of marriage, of taking upon herself 
 the performance of little acts of courtesy 
 and service that fall by right to the husband. 
 
 No attention is sweet that has been ex- 
 acted; but there is no reason or excuse for 
 the neglect, after marriage, of the little 
 amentities and graceful courtesies of court- 
 ship. A wife who runs to shut a door or 
 pick up a dropped article when her husband 
 has started to do it for her, has given him 
 his first lesson in married selfishness and 
 forged the first link in the chain of that 
 inconsiderateness and egotism of which she 
 complains so bitterly in after years. 
 
 On the other hand, to require a devotion 
 that is not prompted by affection would be 
 the height of stupidity. And a due appre-
 
 232 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 ciation of the little offices performed is ob- 
 viously necessary to their voluntary con- 
 tinuance. 
 
 The cultivation of a sense of humor is of 
 a most desirable effort on the part of hus- 
 bands and wives. More homes have been 
 made unhappy through one or other of the 
 married pair's taking himself or herself too 
 seriously than from any other one cause. 
 If the jealous wife, who works herself into 
 a condition of nervous fury over an inno- 
 cent attention to another woman, or who 
 dissolves into tears because her husband 
 fails to account for one half-hour in his 
 day, could only view the situation, for a 
 moment, from a disinterested standpoint, 
 and see the absurdity of her mental attitude, 
 there would be fewer men to take refuge 
 at the club or to seek amusement and dis- 
 traction outside the home. 
 
 Jealousy is a stupid, selfish and humiliat- 
 ing emotion. 
 
 There should be in ideal marriage ab- 
 solute freedom as to the comings and go- 
 ings; liberty of individual friendships and 
 whole-souled recognition on both sides of 
 the need of other companionship than that 
 afforded by conjugal life.
 
 MARRIAGE ACTUAL AND IDEAL 233 
 
 Where there is such knowledge of hu- 
 man needs and also willingness for the 
 partner to lead his or her individual life as 
 he or she may think best, without dictation 
 or jealousy, there we find happy, cheerful 
 homes. 
 
 Many lives are made miserable through 
 the unreasoning jealousy of wives. There 
 are some women so constituted that a light, 
 unconsidered word of appreciation of some 
 woman any woman will make them 
 sulk for days, rendering the home any- 
 thing but an earthly paradise. 
 
 It would show the most profound ego- 
 tism to assume that one could in one's 
 own person fill all the needs of a man's 
 social and intellectual life. And a wife 
 who is a real lover will be glad to see her 
 husband enjoy friendships with women 
 who will sharpen his wits and aid his de- 
 velopment. 
 
 It is a grave question as to how far a 
 wife is justified in claiming certain hours 
 as her right. The loving husband will not 
 need her reminders nor her tears to keep 
 him home in the evenings. Presumably, 
 since he chose her out of all women to 
 be his partner, he loves her best and en-
 
 234 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 joys most what she can give him. If she 
 recognizes this, and is not a victim of that 
 deadliest of all foes to domestic happiness 
 jealousy she will be happy in any 
 event. 
 
 There are wives who are jealous of their 
 husbands' own families; who resent a hus- 
 band's visiting his mother or his sisters, as 
 if such an act implied an infidelity. 
 
 With our broader outlook and our en- 
 larged interests women are growing beyond 
 such pettiness. The man whom we honor 
 with our love we must trust absolutely, 
 and he will be worthy of it. 
 
 If there were more unselfish loving, and 
 less sense of ownership and wifely rights, 
 there would be fewer divorces and more 
 happy homes. 
 
 In looking for desirable characteristics 
 in a possible life-partner, after satisfaction 
 as to the fundamental moral soundness of 
 the individual, look for what is better than 
 accomplishments, better than beauty, better 
 than housewifely aptitude, I mean a sense 
 of humor. 
 
 In the married life of America to-day, 
 there is a significant lack of the helpmeet 
 element. There is no balance of work.
 
 MARRIAGE ACTUAL AND IDEAL 235 
 
 ~ 
 
 Servants perform the household labor, 
 while the wife's duty seems to lie almost 
 solely in the discharge of self-imposed 
 social obligations. 
 
 The husband spends all day in the office, 
 counting-house or store, every energy bent 
 to the task of accumulating enough money 
 to satisfy the heavy demands of the house- 
 hold. In the majority of cases in the so- 
 cial world a man's wife is a drag upon him, 
 spending his money without consideration, 
 and, apparently regarding him chiefly as a 
 source of unlimited dresses and gewgaws. 
 As a reward for incessant, nerve-destroying 
 toil, he has the satisfaction of knowing that 
 his wife is as well dressed as the wife of 
 a more opulent neighbor; that his house- 
 hold appointments are perfect, that his deli- 
 cately nurtured spouse is able to spend all 
 the summer in coolness, dainty frocks, 
 and, perhaps, flirtation. In return for this 
 he expects or at least exercises entire free- 
 dom in matters sexual when she is absent, 
 and an unbridled license as far as her bodily 
 self is concerned when she is present. 
 
 And for a luxurious home and freedom 
 from care, she pays the price of bodily 
 subjection, just as surely as does the des- 
 pised outcast from society.
 
 236 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 A newspaper editorial, recently printed, 
 takes the side of the man in the matter 
 of the bachelor tax. The writer draws 
 attention to the consideration that, while 
 men are usually thoroughly fitted for the 
 positions they occupy, have made them- 
 selves masters of their business, the girls 
 they marry or might marry are unprepared 
 for their duties, and, in most cases, have 
 little knowledge, scientific or practical, of 
 the most important of their functions as 
 caterers and home-makers. He illustrates 
 his argument with the question as to how 
 many women know how to boil an egg 
 properly, so that the egg may be of the 
 same consistency throughout. 
 
 The point is well taken. I like the at- 
 titude, though not for the same reason nor 
 in the same spirit as the writer of the edi- 
 torial. I would say, in passing, that the 
 trend of present-day education is towards 
 the end desired; our girls will be better 
 equipped, will have a surer scientific 
 knowledge of dietetics and of the proper 
 preparation of food as time goes on; and 
 it is the duty of every mother to make 
 careful housekeeping and culinary profici- 
 ency an important part of her daughter's 
 education.
 
 MARRIAGE ACTUAL AND IDEAL 237 
 
 The new thought suggested is this. Let 
 the law take cognizance of marriage as 
 purely a business contract, a home and sup- 
 port on the one hand, a thorough knowl- 
 edge of housekeeping and practical ex- 
 perience therein on the other, there the 
 law is in its element and should be called 
 upon to settle any violations of contract. 
 But with the delicate subject of love the 
 law is a blundering, impertinent interloper; 
 the giving of her body to the man she 
 loves should be, surely, a sacred and a 
 personal matter, if anything on earth can 
 be. 
 
 I believe that marriage is a necessary 
 part of our present development, a social 
 necessity, and in existence today because 
 we, as a whole, desire it. I think, how- 
 ever, that the popular feeling that marriage 
 is a bargain and sale, with a feminine body 
 as the object of barter, is responsible for 
 much of our social unhappiness. 
 
 Let the marriage, therefore, as far as 
 the law is concerned (in our more ad- 
 vanced social life) be a matter of business, 
 a purely practical contract, and offences 
 against marriage be treated in the courts 
 as are violations of other business con-
 
 238 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 tracts; but leave the sacred questions per- 
 taining to love in the shrine where they 
 belong, the inner, deeper, holier sanctuary 
 that lies at the heart of every high-souled, 
 fine man, and every sensitive, delicately- 
 minded woman. 
 
 We have been arguing upon the assump- 
 tion that monogamy is the universal cus- 
 tom in the social life of today; if such 
 were the case in the face of the mismat- 
 ing and inharmony that is so general, it 
 would argue such a magnificent power of 
 endurance, and such a loyal obedience to 
 law, that we should be driven into an ad- 
 miring silence. 
 
 That such is not the case, we are only 
 too well aware. There are enough covert 
 polygamous unions in New York City to 
 show that if monogamy is, as we believe 
 it to be, the natural evolutionary law of 
 human sex-relationship, there must be some- 
 thing radically wrong in the present regu- 
 lations regarding it. Are all the visitors 
 to houses of ill-repute unmarried men ? Not 
 by a vast number. How many members 
 of fashionable churches keep up another 
 establishment than that to which their 
 friends are invited? We have but to in-
 
 MARRIAGE ACTUAL AND IDEAL 239 
 
 quire into the subject to find that, how- 
 ever it may be with women, monogamy 
 with men is, in many cases, but a name. 
 
 On the reasons for the failure of the 
 present system we have already touched. 
 Lack of knowledge on the part of young 
 people, a law that insists on the life bond- 
 age of men aud women whom a few 
 months of married life have shown to be 
 utterly incompatible; these are the two 
 fundamental causes. 
 
 To suggest an improvement is simple 
 enough; to put it into practice in face of 
 the opposition of a conservative and self- 
 satisfied Society, is another matter. 
 
 First, then, I would have our boys and 
 girls thoroughly and wisely instructed as 
 to sex needs, instincts, and powers, taught 
 to distinguish between a flash of animal 
 passion and the wise love than means a 
 life's devotion; taught the innate beauty 
 and purity of the human body, whether it 
 be male or female. 
 
 If a girl were given a high idea of the 
 uses of her wonderful body; a boy an in- 
 tense reverence for womanhood as the 
 potential motherhood of the race; if both 
 were taught to realize to the full their in-
 
 240 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 dividual powers and to see the beauty of 
 a wise conservation of such powers, I be- 
 lieve that we could trust them to mingle 
 freely with confidence in their discretion. 
 
 I believe monogamy to be the natural 
 condition of healthy human life to-day; 
 it is common among a number of the 
 lower animals, and is certainly a beau- 
 tiful and ideal relationship among creatures 
 of mind and soul. The following extract 
 from a letter occurring in an article en- 
 titled: "Divorce in the United States," 
 published in the Contemporary Review, 
 offers a practical suggestion as to future 
 marriage possibilities and ideals. 
 
 " I cannot promise to conform to your 
 ways, nor to bend to your wishes, though 
 I will try to do so. I cannot promise to 
 assume cordial relations with your rela- 
 tives, nor accept your friendships as bind- 
 ing upon me. I cannot promise to be faith- 
 ful to you until death, but I shall be faithful 
 so long as I fill the relation of husband to 
 you. I shall not lead a double life, nor 
 conceal from you any change in my regard 
 for you. If at any time I meet a woman 
 whom I feel I should live with rather than 
 with you, I shall tell you of her with per-
 
 MARRIAGE ACTUAL AND IDEAL 24! 
 
 feet frankness. I think I shall find you all- 
 sufficient, but I don't know. It may be that 
 I shall become and continue the most de- 
 voted of husbands, but I cannot promise it. 
 Long years of association develop intoler- 
 able traits in men and women, very often. 
 
 On the other hand, let me say that I ex- 
 act nothing from you. You are mistress of 
 yourself; come and go as you please, 
 without question and without accounting to 
 me. You are at liberty to cease your as- 
 sociation with me at any time, and to con- 
 sider yourself perfectly free to leave me 
 whenever any other man comes with power 
 to make you happier than I. 
 
 I want you as comrade and lover, not as 
 subject or servant, or unwilling wife. I do 
 not claim any rights over you at all. You 
 can bear me children or not, just as you 
 please. You are a human soul like myself, 
 and I expect you to be as free and sov- 
 ereign as I. 
 
 I have written frankly because I believed 
 it would prejudice you in my favor. Had 
 I believed otherwise, doubtless I should 
 have written in terms of flattery and de- 
 ceit, for of such is man when seeking 
 woman in marriage."
 
 242 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 I think too highly of the character and 
 mental power of human creatures to be 
 willing to admit by ever so slight a con- 
 cession that it is only the fear of the pen- 
 alties of law that keeps a husband and wife 
 together. 
 
 Understanding the other sex more thor- 
 oughly, there would be less glamor, more 
 common sense regarding the choice of a 
 life-partner; the responsibilities to them- 
 selves and to the race being more clearly 
 understood and appreciated by young men 
 and women, the creating of a tie would be 
 a thing of more rather than of less signifi- 
 cance than under the present system; and 
 the importance of wise parentage being the 
 capital factor in their early training, the 
 question of disability on that score would 
 carry a weight that is entirely lacking to-day. 
 
 While I contend that such a marriage, so 
 considered and achieved, would be far less 
 likely to prove a mistake than those con- 
 tracted under existing circumstances, I real- 
 ize fully that the human mind is liable to 
 err, that the judgment of young men and 
 maidens is not perfect, that after an honest 
 trial of each other our young people might 
 find themselves still unmated.
 
 MARRIAGE ACTUAL AND IDEAL 243 
 
 In that case I would have a social opin- 
 ion that would allow them to part as they 
 had met, frankly, without regret or remorse, 
 to find elsewhere, by an added experience 
 and an added wisdom, what the first search 
 had not granted. 
 
 The question of the care and disposition 
 of possible offspring is an important one. 
 As in many of the present cases of di- 
 vorce and separation, the disposition of 
 children might be arranged by mutual 
 agreement; where the father took an in- 
 terest in the life and welfare of his off- 
 spring, he would certainly contribute to its 
 support. I would have the woman pro- 
 tected from possible irresponsibility on the 
 part of the father by an insurance against 
 maternity, payment for which could be 
 made from the time of puberty. Such 
 insurance, the details of which could be 
 easily determined by a practical insurance 
 company, would cover her time of en- 
 forced idleness and provide for her and 
 her child. Payments on such a policy 
 would be made by parents till she could 
 earn for herself, and later by her husband 
 as long as she is under his protection. 
 
 The existence of children would continue
 
 244 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 to exert a strong influence towards the 
 permanence of the marriage tie; a mutual 
 selflessness for the sake of the little ones 
 would be the natural outcome of the re- 
 lationship; a common interest and a com- 
 mon love build a bulwark about the 
 marriage relation no matter what the con- 
 ditions. 
 
 It is the unquestionable duty of every 
 woman to ascertain before marriage what 
 has been the previous life of her prospec- 
 tive husband. Were this an unvarying rule 
 it would have a strong influence upon the 
 morals of the race. While young men 
 realize that no matter how iniquitously they 
 may have lived they may yet expect to 
 take to their arms a sweet pure-living 
 maiden, there will be little chance of a 
 change in their mode of life. 
 
 One of the present great mistakes of 
 lovers is the exalting of the so-called sex- 
 act into a position of undue prominence; 
 thereby giving it an importance that does 
 not legitimately belong to it. Would they 
 but cast their eyes and thoughts a little 
 higher, and look to the exquisite, ethical 
 significance of love, there would be less 
 prostitution of powers, less mental retribu-
 
 MARRIAGE ACTUAL AND IDEAL 245 
 
 tive agony, less martyrdoms, and fewer sex- 
 ual mistakes. 
 
 Love holds a perfect sway, if he be but 
 allowed to do it; he speaks through near, 
 dear comradeship, through the language of 
 the eyes, through sweet caresses. The sex- 
 act should be an occasional, final expres- 
 sion, an expression made possible only 
 by powerful passion. The rushing to the 
 act as the only possibility, the striving for 
 physical expression, sometimes with weary 
 effort, is, not to consider the subject more 
 deeply, the sheerest stupidity. 
 
 The sex-act is only justifiable as the ul- 
 timate expression of a passionate love; to 
 use it in any other way is to emulate 
 barnyard practices and intelligences; to rate 
 our powers of sense and our appreciation 
 of beauty below that of many of the ani- 
 mals whose actions we govern. 
 
 A marriage without love, whole-souled 
 and devoted, is no marriage, though a bishop 
 read the church service, and a thousand 
 people witness the ceremony, and a woman 
 who gives herself to a man because of a 
 desire for social position, wealth, or any 
 other cause save that of deep, true and 
 passionate love, is living a life of legalised 
 prostitution.
 
 246 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 Let those who realize the truth of this? 
 fearlessly state and hold to their belief, and 
 the dawn of a new day will look over our 
 horizon. 
 
 Having been reared and educated with 
 a view to maintaining themselves, and being 
 cheerfully accorded, as is but fair, the same 
 recompense for their labor as that required 
 by their brothers, women would cease to 
 sell themselves for clothes and a home, and 
 become more fitting and useful mates for 
 the men whom they should deem worthy to 
 become the fathers of their children. 
 
 Any attempt at the revolution of a social 
 condition without an accompanying eleva- 
 tion of ideals is but to start an arrow 
 with a broken bow-string. An intelli- 
 gent sympathy is not sufficient, there must 
 be also a deep soul-sprung conviction and 
 an earnest will. If the women of America 
 would but face the situation squarely, band 
 themselves together with a whole-hearted 
 and intelligent determination not to be con- 
 tent with any imperfect or unfair condi- 
 tions, and, so minded and so armed, decide 
 upon a definite course of action, I doubt 
 not that before many decades were passed, 
 the sickening horrors of a so-called "social
 
 MARRIAGE ACTUAL AND IDEAL 247 
 
 evil" would no longer threaten our happi- 
 ness and reproach our culture, and that a 
 generation of noble, heroic, and illustrious 
 men and women would be the harvest of 
 such wise and high thinking and such 
 broad and resolute control.
 
 THE JOY OF LIFE 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 HERE are times in the lives 
 of all men, more often in 
 the lives of poets, when the 
 troubling cares of labor cease 
 for a season, when the dif- 
 ficulties that have vexed the 
 soul fret not for a space, when even the 
 great yearning to know, to understand, 
 stops for an hour its ceaseless urging; and 
 human life with all its possibilities and all 
 its gladnesses holds undisputed sway. 
 
 The sky overhead is blue with an indes- 
 cribable blueness, near the horizon it pales 
 into opal and the mountain stands out clear 
 and black; the waves break at the feet 
 with the exquisite monotony that lulls and 
 heals; the meadows are full of tender 
 shooting things, for the spring life is start- 
 ing, and in the branches of the willows 
 and the evergreens the birds are uttering 
 love-songs or seeking a nesting place; and 
 the heart grows big with an uncompre-
 
 THE JOY OF LIFE 249 
 
 bended sympathy and throbs with a glad- 
 ness that is universal and primeval; the 
 arms reach forth as though to embrace the 
 entire cosmos with strenuous gladness, and 
 we murmur how good a thing it is to be 
 alive. 
 
 Such, without doubt, is the divine plan; 
 for the thought that human life was in- 
 tended as a vale of tears I can see no 
 argument that is in any degree satisfactory. 
 That life is intentionally bitter in order to 
 increase by contrast the delights of a future 
 existence I can find no rational excuse for 
 believing. That the poet, whose spirit is 
 so nearly akin to the divine, whose insight 
 penetrates where the uninspired brain may 
 not think to follow, experiences this joy 
 in existence more keenly and more con- 
 tinuously than mere every-day mortals is a 
 more serious argument for the wisdom of 
 his attitude towards life than the most ap- 
 parent of logical deductions, the most per- 
 tinent reasoning. The poet and the little 
 child go hand in hand in one's thought, 
 both infinitely careless of material things, 
 both blessed by Heaven-sent visions; wan- 
 derers in a fairy land of unspoiled beautiful 
 things, nearer to the fount of knowledge,
 
 250 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 to the eternal truth, to the everlasting source 
 of good than saints who have won their 
 crowns through thorny trial or wise men 
 who have grown hoary with many decades 
 of mental toil, or have offered up their 
 lives upon the altar of human knowledge. 
 To imagine ourselves placed in a beau- 
 tiful world to which we are expected to 
 shut our eyes, surrounded by pleasant things 
 which we are forbidden to touch, endowed 
 with a wonderful capacity for pleasure and 
 required to subdue and mortify instead of 
 using and enjoying, is surely but to cast 
 supreme discredit on the wisdom that 
 planned our material existence. To enjoy, 
 to enjoy, that is the purpose for which we 
 were given this glad world, these exquisite 
 bodies, this brave mentality; to enjoy 
 wisely yet lustily, temperately yet fully, 
 purely yet passionately. To breathe in with 
 great absorbing breaths all the sweetness 
 of the beautiful life that Nature holds in 
 the hollow of her hand; to draw life-giv- 
 ing happiness into our souls as the babe 
 draws its strength from the mother's breast; 
 to drink and be satisfied and drink again, 
 ever stronger and braver and more desir- 
 ous, this is what, of a surety, was de-
 
 THE JOY OF LIFE 251 
 
 signed for us in the great plan of creation- 
 To live feebly, to lack keen appreciations, 
 to artificially stimulate a desire and faint 
 in the attempt to satisfy it, this is surely 
 as far from the design of a rational creator 
 as any ignorant thought or incontinent de- 
 sire of man could conceive. 
 
 Our beautiful human body! See its 
 strength, its muscles, its firmness, its elastic- 
 ity and vigor, its agility and grace. How 
 each part harmonizes with all the rest! 
 Harmony of outline and function, power of 
 muscle and limb, capacity for exquisite 
 joy, why should we not glory in it? 
 
 The first throb of a new life in the 
 yearning womb of the mother, how it stirs 
 with an unknown joy the inmost depths of 
 the maternal heart; how she notes the grow- 
 ing power in the tiny unborn limbs, and 
 glories in the strength that shows it- 
 self daily more insistant and individual. 
 The little heart, grown from her body yet 
 marking the flowings of its own life-blood, 
 how wonderfully it utters itself to her; and 
 she walks among men and moves about her 
 home realm and takes part in the ordinary 
 duties of life knowing that, unacknowledged 
 perhaps, and certainly unexplained, there
 
 252 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 lies, back of all, yet through all, the won- 
 derful consciousness of an intimate sweet 
 relationship. 
 
 Sickness is a mistake, an error of living, 
 and has no part in the purpose of things; 
 these bodies were not made for sickness 
 but for health, magnificent exuberant health! 
 To walk for miles through the dense woods 
 among sounds and sights of beauty, to 
 plunge into the cool water, swim and dive 
 till the limbs are wearied, and then to 
 stretch upon the warm sand in utter relax- 
 ation; to have stirred the brain to its depths 
 in search of some great thing and at length 
 to have made it ours; to have attempted 
 and accomplished; to have found a good 
 comrade and have sat with him in the si- 
 lence of friendship, heart to heart; to have 
 gathered long sprays of new-blown linnea, 
 and forgotten oneself in half - swooning 
 ecstacy over the subtle, penetrating sweet- 
 ness; to have hungered and thirsted and 
 known satisfaction of the desire for food; 
 to have known what it is to work and 
 weary and then to sleep through long sweet 
 hours; are not these things joy? Joy of 
 the physical body and brain, joy of the 
 glad perceptive senses with their treasure-
 
 THE JOY OF LIFE 253 
 
 house of delight. So far from attempting 
 to restrain our pleasure in things physical 
 we should rather cultivate enjoyment, train 
 the duller senses to perceive more fully, 
 improve and quicken the sight of the eyes 
 to the apprehension of lovely things. 
 
 The aesthetic sense which is the result 
 of mental refinement, or is, in itself, a dis- 
 tinct gift, is one of the sources of our keen- 
 est enjoyment: an appreciation of the beau- 
 tiful is a never-failing delight. The sight 
 of a beautiful man or woman may give 
 pleasure that has in it not the faintest sus- 
 picion of evil thought or desire; the same 
 rapture that is realized in the exquisite scent 
 of a flower or the sound of illuminating 
 music. 
 
 The true meaning of the joy of life can 
 never be understood by one who lives un- 
 der the dominion of social conventions; 
 to enjoy one must be free, and the bond- 
 age of social customs is the veriest thral- 
 dom. For what have we been given minds 
 and souls and intuition? To be slaves to 
 the warped fancy of a self-throned social 
 deity; to regulate our rational instincts by 
 the false plumb-line of a distorted and un- 
 healthy caricature of civilization; to leave
 
 254 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 our talents of free thought and Godlike 
 action tied up in the napkin of an unholy 
 fear; to shroud ourselves in the moth and 
 rust garment of a lying respectability in- 
 stead of standing in pure innocence to the 
 purging of the winds of God? 
 
 We are content for the most part to be 
 mere manikins, clothed in garments of 
 which we are proud because, forsooth, they 
 are like those of everybody else; governed 
 by a set of stupid and senseless rules of 
 etiquette and order; judging by a code of 
 morals that has its basis in falsehood; and 
 lying down to die, satisfied, if we have lived 
 in our little world in such a manner as not 
 to have been noticed, our behavior such as 
 to have called forth no criticism; a glori- 
 ous ambition truly, and one that would seem 
 easy of attainment! 
 
 In the name of God, let us live our own 
 lives without regard to the consequences, 
 without fear of criticism; let us be free 
 men and women. 
 
 There is no one in this universe but our- 
 selves and God; not one single soul for 
 whose approbation it is worth while to give 
 up one precious moment of life. The inner 
 light, call it conscience, intuition, what you
 
 THE JOY OF LIFE 255 
 
 will, the spark from Divinity that informs 
 and directs, that is our safe guide. To 
 make ourselves great, not to serve personal 
 ambitions but because of inherent greatness, 
 and, so doing, to refuse to be bound by any 
 iron-clad rules of society or of merely con- 
 ventional morality, is the only sanity. 
 When we have constituted ourselves free 
 free to live among our fellows but to gov- 
 ern ourselves, free to dispose of our bodies 
 as our own good sense dictates, and to 
 speak such things as may seem to us wise 
 and profitable then shall we know the 
 real joy of life. 
 
 To fear no man this in itself constitutes 
 a_ gladness. And, being free, to joy in our 
 freedom to give happiness and beauty to 
 others, this is, after all, the supreme secret. 
 Freedom and altruism go hand in hand. 
 To be free does not mean aloofness; we 
 can never stand alone. Brotherhood is the 
 universal law, and our interdependence is 
 one of the most beautiful as it is one of 
 the most practical features of our present 
 existence. To know ourselves members of 
 one great family, to do away forever with 
 the sense of separateness, to realize our duty 
 to every common member of the world
 
 256 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 circle, a duty of helpfulness, of example, 
 of all save servility; this is to realize the 
 joy of life in the gladness of service. 
 
 Such a knowledge, fully ours, will in 
 time bring about that international and cos- 
 mopolitan feeling that makes for universal 
 peace. And the realization of the meaning 
 of the joy of life will render the taking of 
 life a horror and an impossibility. The 
 destruction of a God-given element, the 
 taking away of something which no power 
 can ever restore, the wilful prevention of a 
 present possible advancement, this is surely 
 not the unimportant thing which universal 
 action seems to suggest. 
 
 Capital punishment is revenge, and does 
 not right the wrong, does not adjust a 
 faulty balance; and the hewing and hack- 
 ing of one's fellowmen as a means of sat- 
 isfying national honor is a relic of savagery 
 and of the childhood of the world. 
 
 To descend from the greater to the les- 
 ser, I would that every careless woman 
 who, to adorn her own person, is the cause 
 of the slaughter of helpless, innocent birds 
 might be obliged, to accomplish her end, 
 to take with her own hand the life that is 
 necessary to the satisfying of her vanity.
 
 THE JOY OF LIFE 257 
 
 To watch the quivering death agonies of a 
 gentle and unoffending song bird, and then 
 to wear it with satisfaction and pride among 
 the lace and ribbons of her hat, would 
 surely brand her a creature without heart 
 or feeling, a monster in the garb of fem- 
 ininity. 
 
 Let our women live in the open air, un- 
 der the eye of Heaven, absorbing whole- 
 some and invigorating thought, not on the 
 soft sofa of the idle and luxurious, dead- 
 ening the brain and enervating the senses 
 by the incessant imbibing of the degener- 
 ating and demoralizing fiction of the day. 
 
 Biologists tell us that the prolongation of 
 the reproductive period means a lengthen- 
 ing of life; it follows therefore that a rea- 
 sonable continence, a temperate indulgence 
 in bodily pleasures is the truest wisdom; 
 the abuse of a power simply means its de- 
 cay. To -prolong joy; is not this what we 
 all crave? 
 
 If perfection is harmony, is not intem- 
 perance, which is inharmony, a deadly sin 
 against ourselves ? To carry our capacity 
 of enjoyment on through middle life into 
 a sane and wonderful old age; to hold our 
 mental and sexual faculties and apprecia-
 
 258 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 tions in a firm grasp; to be masters of 
 ourselves till the end of life, no matter 
 what the future, is not this the most ob- 
 vious wisdom? There is joy in the mastery 
 of a bodily temptation like the joy in the 
 taming of a wild beast; we know whence 
 the exultation comes, it is the triumph of 
 the greater passion over the lesser, of the 
 higher over the lower, of the reality over 
 the seeming. 
 
 Can we not see the day approaching 
 when love will draw a man and a woman 
 out of the relaxing warmth of over-crowded 
 houses into the largeness and grace of na- 
 ture's haunts and home; when the ideal in 
 the surroundings of love will be the silent 
 forest and the rushing stream; when the 
 consummation of a grand and godly im- 
 pulse will be accompanied by the fine roar- 
 ing of the wind, or the sweet symphonies 
 of the birds, when lovers will hear the voice 
 of God in the garden and be not ashamed ? 
 
 The main secret of the joy of life is 
 never to look behind. Let the dead past 
 bury its dead. What though, on the high- 
 road of bygone living, lie corpses of vain 
 endeavors, of lost ambition, of sadness and 
 sin? The broad white path is before us,
 
 THE JOY OF LIFE 259 
 
 we have left the old road behind, and we 
 cannot change it by so much as one dust- 
 grain if we would. Forward, upward. The 
 old experience is ours to use; there is not 
 one failure, nay, there is not, I say it 
 thoughtfully one sin, which has not made 
 of us something more than we were. Our 
 all-embracing sympathy goes out to all who 
 fail, to all who have sinned, and the feet 
 are firmer than of old. Despair and re- 
 morse are as unphilosophical as they are 
 harmful. Shall we sit still and grieve that 
 our great tree has fallen in the autumn 
 storm? Nay, up and plant in its place a 
 fine young sapling; fix the roots firm and 
 deep, and watch with joy the new growth. 
 The past is no longer ours, but we hold 
 the future in our hands; what shall we 
 make of it? 
 
 "God's in his Heaven 
 All 's right with the world." 
 
 Pippa's little song is truth itself though in 
 metaphor. However and with whatever 
 plan this great life of ours started, ultimate 
 good is sure. Evolution is the law, and 
 we may not retrograde but in seeming, as 
 a climber mounting a sandy cliff slips back
 
 260 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 somewhat at each step as his feet too 
 sturdily press the yielding soil. 
 
 " Life is good 
 
 Were the one lesson understood 
 Of its most sacred brotherhood." 
 
 We have a common origin, physically 
 and spiritually; nothing can, if we look 
 deeply enough, harm one nation without in 
 a lesser degree injuring other nations; and 
 the hurt of one man means the hurt of all. 
 As a stone thrown into the water starts 
 outward moving circles of wider and wider 
 extent, so the effect of a deed once done 
 can never be estimated. Suppose that we 
 have wilfully injured a fellow being; we 
 have harmed our own nature, have caused 
 in ourself an inharmony that re-acts tem- 
 porarily on all with whom we come in 
 contact, and in that direction spreads itself 
 whither we may not know; we become 
 the father or mother of children and the 
 spirit that made that evil act possible is 
 handed on to them and their offspring. 
 In like manner the injury done will act on 
 the one injured and on his circle and his 
 descendants; no human power of thought 
 can determine the limit of one evil act.
 
 THE JOY OF LIFE 26 1 
 
 And the converse is no less true. Good 
 is eternal, and the far-reaching result of a 
 good deed is as sure as eternity. 
 
 We realize the joy of life just in so far 
 as we strive to make joy possible to others 
 and to the world. Until the world comes 
 to recognize the truth of eternal brother- 
 hood, until we feel that the interests of 
 another are as important as our own, and 
 as dear to us, until we see in the far fu- 
 ture the dawn of a new and broader social 
 system, and national government, we must 
 wave the flag of an individual freedom and 
 an individual sympathy, and faint not though, 
 in the dusk of halting opinion and old es- 
 tablished customs, we may sometimes seem 
 to stand alone. However this may seem 
 to us, let us be assured that there are yet 
 " seven hundred in Israel who have not 
 bowed the knee to Baal.'' 
 
 The El Dorado of Southey and Coler- 
 idge we do not expect to realize, at least 
 under present prospective conditions. Com- 
 munists, socialists, social and political re- 
 formers of all kinds, though actuated per- 
 haps by the best of motives and the purest 
 enthusiasm, have, through some unforseen 
 combination of circumstances, from a faulty
 
 262 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 working hypothesis, or a wrong applica- 
 tion of theories, courted failure. But better 
 a thousand failures than an unseeing apathy; 
 better the mistakes of overzealous enthu- 
 siasts than the degeneracy of self-satisfac- 
 tion; better failure in the cause of one's 
 fellowmen than the highest success that is 
 the outcome of personal ambition. So long 
 as hundreds are dying of starvation in our 
 great cities, while the idle and the indolent 
 look on indifferently; so long as the bodies 
 and souls of women are for sale on our 
 streets because there is no bread for them 
 to eat; so long as little children are born 
 and reared in filth and indecency while 
 tenement owners are fattening on their 
 degradation; so long as drink is the only 
 relaxation, and disease and incest walk 
 hand and hand among the homes of the 
 poor, so long must we stretch out the right 
 hand of fellowship to any who have in 
 their hearts a burning desire to aid their 
 fellowmen, a real and fruitful knowledge of 
 the meaning and force of the word "brother- 
 hood." No political or social reform can 
 ever accomplish its end, no national policy 
 can ever become a lasting power unless 
 the fundamental principle of individual free-
 
 THE JOY OF LIFE 263 
 
 dom and individual right is the foundation 
 stone. Greed and selfishness as national 
 characteristics are but repeated in the indi- 
 vidual, and so, inversely, we must educate 
 the individual if we would expect a national 
 change of base. Love for humanity com- 
 bined with patience must be the leaven set 
 working in a selfish society. And for our 
 comfort we have the knowledge that the 
 law of action and reaction will fully arbi- 
 trate; there will be a future evening up; 
 an ultimate though progressive adjustment. 
 
 Health, freedom, brotherhood, a trinity 
 whose unity implies the joy of life, these 
 form our heritage if we would but seize 
 upon it. But the reproach of the Laodi- 
 cean church is a reproach that falls upon 
 the great majority of the world citizens to- 
 day; we are "lukewarm, and neither cold 
 nor hot." 
 
 To paraphrase the words of the Hebrew 
 prophet: we have eyes for the lesser things 
 of life, but we see not the real issues; we 
 have ears that listen for the praise of men, 
 but we hear not the music of the eternal 
 gospel, the perpetual revelation of an ever- 
 lasting and universal good will to men. 
 
 And for the sweetest and most exquisite
 
 264 WOMAN AND THE RACE 
 
 of all God's laws, the great law of sex, we 
 have in our egotism and ignorance an un- 
 natural and superficial judgment and an 
 oblique vision. 
 
 There is a glint of gold, however, in the 
 dawning of the new thought that arises with 
 the twentieth century. There is a restless 
 discontent with past ignorance that prom- 
 ises a fuller knowledge and a braver out- 
 look. The mothers of our land are aroused, 
 and the end is not yet, for the kingdom of 
 a wise self-knowledge " suffereth violence, 
 and the violent take it by force.''
 
 ERRATA 
 
 Page 
 
 Line 
 
 
 Should Read 
 
 7 
 
 '9 
 
 woman 
 
 women 
 
 62 
 
 II 
 
 fatherhood 
 
 father 
 
 67 
 
 2 
 
 cemetary 
 
 cemetery 
 
 90 
 
 2 3 
 
 determinately 
 
 determinedly 
 
 93 
 
 4 
 
 consequence 
 
 consequences 
 
 96 
 
 26 
 
 argu- 
 
 argument 
 
 H3 
 
 13 
 
 occurrance 
 
 occurrence 
 
 144 
 
 3 
 
 it 
 
 tt 
 
 191 
 
 2 5 
 
 as well known 
 
 is well known 
 
 203 
 
 28 
 
 occurrance 
 
 occurrence 
 
 231 
 
 i 
 
 omit and determinations 
 
 232 
 
 4 
 
 omit second of 
 
 
 238 
 
 5 
 
 delicately minded 
 
 delicate minded
 
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