And I fail to see that a future generation will be in any way injured because the mothers of that generation are no longer required to please their husbands by stunting and narrowing such brains as they were born with, because ignorance and silliness are no longer considered essential qualifications for the duties of wifehood and motherhood. The recognition of woman’s complete humanity, apart from husband or lover, must mean inevitably the recognition of her right to develop every side of that humanity, the mental and moral as well as the physical and sexual; and inevitably and insensibly the old aristocratic masculine cruelty which, because she was an inferior, imposed stupidity upon her and made lack of intelligence a preliminary condition of motherhood, will become a thing of the past. Nor will a man be less fitted to fight the battle of life with honour and advantage to himself, because he was not born the son of a fool.
The male half of creation is still apt to talk (if not quite so confidently as of yore) as if the instinct and desire for maternity were the one overpowering factor in our lives. It may be so as regards the majority of us, though the shrinkage of the birth-rate in so far as it is attributable to women would seem to point the other way; but as I have shown it is impossible to be certain on the point until other instincts and desires have been given fair play. Under a voluntary system of marriage they would be given fair play; in a world where a woman might make what she would of her own life, might interest herself in what seemed good to her, she would hardly bear a child unless she desired to bear it. That is to say she would bear a child not just because it was the right thing for her to do—since there would be a great many other right things for her to do—but because the maternal instinct was so strong in her that it overpowered other interests, desires or ambitions, because she felt in her the longing to give birth to a son of whom she had need. And such a son would come into a world where his place was made ready for him; being welcome, and a hundred times welcome, because he was loved before he was conceived.
Nor does one imagine that such a son, when he grew of an age to understand, would think the less of his mother because he knew that he was no accident in her life, but a choice; because he learned that his birth was something more than a necessary and inevitable incident in her compulsory trade. One does not imagine that he would reverence her the less because he saw in her not only the breeding factor in the family, but a being in all respects as human as himself, who had suffered for him and suffered of her own free will; nor that he would be less grateful to her because she, having the unquestioned right to hold life from him, had chosen instead to give it.
Transcriber's Notes
Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.
In the Preface “largely unnecessary and [unavoidable]” has been changed to “largely unnecessary and avoidable”
The table of contents has been added by the transcriber.