7 6o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



First. It is too recent in effect, having barely reached the sec- 

 ond generation. Second. There are more potent causes heredity, 

 race deterioration, and false marriage. Third. It actually pro- 

 duces healthy wives and mothers in the fullest sense. 



There is no denial of the fact that too large a percentage of 

 educated women,* as well as of the cultivated classes generally, 

 remain unmarried. However, it has been shown in regard to the 

 former, that " dulled instinct " is not a tenable cause. Some have 

 attributed it more wisely to increased " nicety of choice." This 

 may prove beneficial in the end, when man shall have become a 

 more importunate suitor. 



Women can no longer be coerced into marriage, nor will they 

 marry from a sense of duty to humanity. But for these reasons 

 there need be no fear that the race will perish. There is as much 

 prospect that roses will refuse to bloom in June as that women 

 will ever become invincible to love. This force, and this alone, 

 can make of them light-hearted mothers in place of the weary 

 wrecks whose perverted motherhood has been anything but a 

 boon to humanity. As long as it is taught that motherhood 

 oppresses woman physically and restricts her intellectually, so 

 long the average woman may dread or rebel against it. "When she 

 studies it in all its conditioning, she finds it does not impose such 

 a fate upon her. She learns to discriminate between the ordering 

 of Nature and the blunders of mankind, and recognizes that nor- 

 mal physical development can not be antagonistic to mental 

 growth. 



If, as is known among the lower forms of life, there should be 

 such evil fate in store for women as parthenogenesis or poly- 

 embryony, or any entire change of function or structure, it would 

 be quite useless to rebel. Even such highly imaginary metamor- 

 phosis would not imply extinction of species. The causes of this 

 calamity have not been fathomed by Darwin nor Weissman ; and, 

 if such disintegrating forces were at work among us, who would 

 be wise enough to recognize them ? 



Study of nature leads us to believe that, if the individual be 

 free and supplied with the means of life, there is great probability 

 of the survival of his kind. However, we have seen that the hu- 

 man race decreases under artificial conditioning, and, if we are 

 concerned lest man should become extinct, let us strive to live 

 simply, naturally ; neither separate nor antagonize the sexes ; 

 then there may be more need of Mr. Malthus than of any pessi- 

 mistic prophecy on the danger of developing a woman's mind. 



* Highly educated women are yet a minority among women of the so-called " cultivated 

 classes," and are better ranked with working women, since they agree with them more 

 nearly in habits of life. 



