i 7 2 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



marry, and where the burden of maternity is thus most evenly 

 shared between them.* Admitting that certain women may have 

 good reasons for avoiding maternity on various grounds unfit- 

 ness, or, what is probably much the same thing at bottom, disin- 

 clination and admitting also that where such good reasons exist, 

 it is best those women should remain unmarried, we must still feel 

 that in most cases marriage is in itself desirable, and that limited 

 families are better than large ones. In other words, it is best for 

 the community at large that most women should marry, and should 

 have moderate families, rather than that fewer should marry and 

 have unwieldily large ones ; for if families are moderate there will 

 be a greater reserve of health and strength left in the mothers for 

 each birth, the production of children can be spread more slowly 

 over a longer time, and the family resources will be less heavily 

 taxed for their maintenance and education. Incidentally this will 

 benefit both parents as well as the community. That is to say, 

 where many marriages and small families are the rule, the chil- 

 dren will on the average be born healthier, be better fed, and be 

 launched more fairly on the world in the end. Where marriages 

 are fewer and families large, the strain of maternity will be most 

 constant and most heavily felt ; the father will be harder worked, 

 and the children will be born feebler, will be worse fed, and will 

 start worse equipped in the battle of life. 



Hence I would infer that the goal a wise community should 

 keep in view is rather more marriages and fewer children per 

 marriage, than fewer marriages and more children per marriage. 



Or, to put these conclusions another way : in any case, the 

 vast majority of women in any community must needs become 

 wives and mothers ; and in the best ordered community the 

 largest possible number will doubtless become so, in order to dis- 

 tribute the burden equally, and to produce in the end the best re- 

 sults for the nation. 



Well, it may be brutal and unmanly to admit these facts or to 

 insist upon these facts, as we are often told it is by maiden ladies ; 

 but still, if we are to go on existing at all, we must look the facts 

 fairly and squarely in the face, and must see how modern tenden- 

 cies stand with regard to them. 



Now, I have the greatest sympathy with the modern woman's 

 demand for emancipation. I am an enthusiast on the Woman 

 Question. Indeed, so far am I from wishing to keep her in sub- 

 jection to man, that I should like to see her a great deal more 

 emancipated than she herself as yet at all desires. Only, her 

 emancipation must not be of a sort that interferes in any way with 



*Oh, yes, I know all about Malthus ; but Mr. Galton hag shown that a certain amount 

 of over-population is necessary for survival of the fittest, and that if the best and most in- 

 telligent classes abstain, the worst and lowest will surely make up the leeway for them. 



