LIX.
1.—“Each sequent life shall feel her finer care.”
“The one thing constant, the one peak that rises above all clouds, the one window in which the light for ever burns, the one star that darkness cannot quench, is woman’s love. This one fact justifies the existence and the perpetuation of the human race. Again I say that women are better than men; their hearts are more unreservedly given; in the web of their lives sorrow is inextricably woven with the greatest joys; self-sacrifice is a part of their nature, and at the behest of love and maternity they walk willingly and joyously down to the very gates of death. Is there nothing in this to excite the admiration, the adoration, of a modern reformer? Are the monk and nun superior to the father and mother?”—Robert Ingersoll (North American Review, Sept., 1890).
2.—“Each heir of life a wealthier bounty share;”
Poets and physiologists agree in these prognostications. The keen observer, Bastian, in his treatise on archebiosis, willingly calls to his support an equally conscientious ally, in the following passage:—
“We must battle on along the path of knowledge and of duty, trusting in that natural progress towards a far distant future for the human race, such as its past history may warrant us in anticipating. For, as Mr. Wallace points out, those natural influences which have hitherto promoted man’s progress ‘still acting on his mental organisation, must ever lead to the more perfect adaptation of man’s higher faculties to the conditions of surrounding nature and to the exigencies of the social state,’ so that ‘his mental constitution may continue to advance and improve, till the world is again inhabited by a single, nearly homogeneous race, no individual of which will be inferior to the noblest specimens of existing humanity.’”—Dr. H. Charlton Bastian (“The Beginnings of Life,” Vol. II., p. 633).
3.—“Those lives allied in equal union chaste.”
“The great chastity of paternity, to match the great chastity of maternity.”
—Walt Whitman (“Children of Adam”).
4.—“A sweeter purpose, purer rapture, taste;”
“A wife is no longer the husband’s property; and, according to modern ideas, marriage is, or should be, a contract on the footing of perfect equality between the sexes. The history of human marriage is the history of a relation in which women have been gradually triumphing over the passions, the prejudices, and the selfish interests of men.”—Edward Westermarck (Concluding words of “The History of Human Marriage”).
7.—“The only rivalry ...”
“When woman finds her proper place in legislation, it will be found ultimately that it will be not as man’s rival, but his helpmate.”—Mabel Collins (“On Woman’s Relation to the State”).
8.—“How for their lineage fair still larger fate to find.”
“Lycurgus, the Spartan lawgiver, had the idea of making public principle and utility predominate over private interests and affections; and on that idea he ordained that children were not to be the property of their parents, but of the State, which was to direct their education, and determine their modes of life. A better idea with the legislators of the future—the number of whom will be equal with that of all wholesomely-developed men and women upon the earth—will be to take fullest advantage of all natural instincts. The parents, their hearts ever yearning with love for their offspring, and the community, careful of its individual members, co-operating in placing the children under all good influences towards that development, which, being the best for their individual lives, will also coincide with what is best for the general welfare. For this end, the experience of the past, and the higher wisdom of their own times, will far better qualify them to judge of fitting means and methods than we can now either surmise or suggest.”—David Maxwell (“Stepping-stones to Socialism,” p. 15).