VIII
In aiming at Hermaphrodism, Feminism is contriving not only at frustration of all that Evolution has achieved in Life and Faculty, but it is making for the extinction of Life itself.
The Hermaphrodite is incapable of parenthood. And in the degree to which members of either sex lapse toward Neuterdom, in body or in mind, they become incapable of transmitting to offspring all those higher developments of form and faculty which are, essentially, Sex-differentiations. The present-day decline in parental impulse and affection, which shows, among other signs, in ever-decreasing Birth-rates, is a symptom of temperamental Neuterdom; evidence alike of Sex-decline, and, in this, of decline of that vital energy and spiritual impulse whereof Sex is the manifestation.
Such trend toward Race-suicide denotes, in the Race, that same neurasthenia and pusillanimity, which, in the individual, impel him to personal suicide.
Latter-day marriage, greedily grasping all that Life and Love bestow while grudging any due to Life and Love, is not true Marriage—but is sacrilege.
Between this and the mating of true men and women, who, in gratitude for Love, pay tribute joyfully to Life in lives to follow after them, is all the vital difference, in impulse and emotion, between the Ship of Love—with its mysterious freight—immured within a narrow lock whereof the gate to the Beyond is sealed, and the Ship of Love launched free upon the open sea of Human Destiny—a Shining sea of Faith and Hope, which tides beyond the narrow mortal gateway toward a Great Unknown; Remote, Illimitable, Veiled in Everlasting Silence.
This ship fares forth upon its voyage of Mystery, beatified by full surrender of all lesser issues to that sacred one of the Eternal Human—a surrender which endues true marriage with tenderness and awe and beauty.
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Do we not pitch our songs too low, O sweet—my Singers?