Human Physiology. 281 



Children are the most helpless of all young creatures, and 

 require the care of parents for the longest period. The care of a 

 husband for his wife, and of a father for his child, is an evident 

 necessity. The proper care and education of a single child 

 should extend over at least fifteen years, and that of a family 

 may reach to thirty years, or throughout the greater part of an 

 ordinary life. During all periods of pregnancy, child-bearing, 

 nursing, and the education and care of a family, every woman 

 has a right to the sympathy, sustaining love, and constant aid 

 of her husband. No man has the right to desert or leave help- 

 less, or even dependent upon others, except in extraordinary 

 cases, the mother of his children. For this reason soldiers, who 

 may be sent to distant countries, are not usually allowed to 

 marry, and sailors who are absent on long voyages can very im- 

 perfectly perform the duties of husbands, and the fathers of fami- 

 lies. And many men and women who are called to important 

 social and religious functions, priests, educators, and those who 

 devote their lives to the service of the sick in hospitals, or to 

 the succour of the poor, renounce, like soldiers and sailors, 

 the pleasures of marriage, devoting their whole lives and all 

 their strength to the performance of what they consider higher 

 or more urgent duties. Celibacy, which exists to a large 

 extent, from choice or necessity, in most civilised countries, 

 certainly does not become wrong, as some seem to imagine, when 

 it is adopted as a vocation and from a sense of religious duty, and 

 celibate priests, and monks, and nuns, have surely as good a 

 right to refrain from marriage as selfish bachelors who prefer the 

 comforts of their clubs to the cares of a family. 



Marriage, like celibacy, should be a matter of vocation. The 

 special object of marriage is to have children the co-operating 

 motive is that two persons, drawn to each other by a mutual 

 affection, may live helpfully and happily together. A selfish 

 marriage for its merely animal gratifications a marriage in 

 which strength, health, usefulness, often life itself, are sacrificed 



