26 LAY SERMONS, ADDRESSES, AND REVIEWS. [n. 



their chances. Better mothers will brino; forth better 

 sons, and the impetus gained by the one sex will be 

 transmitted, in the next generation, to the other. The 

 most Darwinian of theorists will not venture to pro- 

 pound the doctrine, that the physical disabilities under 

 which women have hitherto laboured, in the struggle for 

 existence with men, are likely to be removed by even the 

 most skilfully conducted process of educational selection. 



We are, indeed, fully prepared to believe that the 

 bearing of children may, and ought, to become as free 

 from clanger and long disability, to the civilized woman, 

 as it is to the savage ; nor is it - improbable that, as 

 society advances towards its right organization, mother- 

 hood will occupy a less space of woman's life than it has 

 hitherto done. But still, unless the human species is to 

 come to an end altogether — a consummation which can 

 hardly be desired by even the most ardent advocate of 

 " women's rights " — somebody must be good enough to 

 take the trouble and responsibility of annually adding to 

 the world exactly as many people as die out of it. In 

 consequence of some domestic difficulties, Sydney Smith 

 is said to have suggested that it would have been good 

 for the human race had the model offered by the hive 

 been followed, and had all the working part of the female 

 community been neuters. Failing any thorough-going 

 reform of this kind, we see nothing for it but the old 

 division of humanity into men potentially, or actually, 

 fathers, and women potentially, if not actually, mothers. 

 And we fear that so long as this potential motherhood is 

 her lot, woman will be found to be fearfully weighted in 

 the race of life. 



The duty of man is to see that not a grain is piled 

 upon that load beyond what Nature imposes; that 

 injustice is not added to inequality. 



