A CURIOUS EXPERIENCE 325 



make him revise his judgment. And, whatever 

 may be the case in the future, so far this material 

 development has not, as in the English-speak- 

 ing world and in old France, been accompanied 

 by a moral change which threatens complete 

 loss of race supremacy because of sheer dwin- 

 dling in the birth-rate. The men and women of 

 Quebec, Brazil, and Argentina are still primarily 

 fathers and mothers; and unless this is true of 

 a race it neither can nor ought to permanently 

 prosper. The atrophy of the healthy sexual 

 instinct is in its efifects equally destructive 

 whether it be due to licentiousness, asceticism, 

 coldness, or timidity; whether it be due to cal- 

 culated self-indulgence, love of ease and com- 

 fort, or absorption in worldly success on the 

 part of the man, or, on the part of the woman, 

 to that kind of shrieking '* feminism," the an- 

 tithesis of all worth calling womanly, which 

 gives fine names to shirking of duty, and to 

 the fear of danger and discomfort, and actually 

 exalts as praiseworthy the abandonment or 

 subordination by women of the most sacred 

 and vitally important of the functions of woman- 

 hood. It is not enough that a race shall be com- 

 posed of good fighters, good workers, and good 

 breeders; but, unless the qualities thus in- 

 dicated are present in the race foundation, then 



