The beginning of civilization was when the mother bid the rude men of the forest and hill to build the needed shelter in grove or cave to protect her and her helpless offspring. And from that simple shelter or thatched-roofed hut has sprung the vine-clad cottage, and the marble palace, and the family roof-tree of every house in every land. It was the mothers of men who filled up the broken ranks of war, and brought peace, and wove garments, and refined and civilized man and taught him the arts and commerce of civilized life. And could the mothers control the destinies of nations, their loving hearts would banish war, and peace would be universal.
And the most precious heritage of every nation on the green earth is the nobility of its mothers, for without noble mothers, it can have no worthy and manly men.
All nations should recognize this fact, and instead of giving pensions to those who destroy life, they should give them to those who multiply and replenish it, and make a nation worthy of existence and fame. And God will surely bestow on the mothers of men a crown of eternal glory for every life added to his empire and domain of deathless eternities.
The momentous question arises in this busy age of travel and pleasure, when so many seek the luxurious ease of opulence and avoid as far as possible all cares and responsibility, Will the emancipated womanhood of our land deny the law of love and life, written in the heart and conscience of all sentient beings, and decline the angelic ministrations of maternity? Will they refuse to join in the economy of God and nature, or leave this high and holy vocation to the ignorant and superstitious of our foreign element? If so, the citizenship of our beloved nation will degenerate with each succeeding generation.
Will the modern woman seek social pleasures and the flattery of passing admiration in lieu of home life and maternity, and be satisfied to flutter as a gaudy butterfly of fashion? Will her womanly heart find the prattle of a baby voice and the pressure of its chubby hands upon her smiling face, as it crows in her loving arms, a truer, sweeter pleasure than the social triumphs of a few fleeting seasons? A joyous child brings more pleasure to a household than a marble palace with mahogany furniture and an automobile.
This is the all-important woman question of the future—the question of race suicide. For the entrance of woman into all the vocations of business life, the tendency to avoid domestic cares, the laxity of the marriage vows, together with the elimination of homes for boarding houses, and the prevalence of divorces, makes it a serious question for the future. Already this pressing vital question causes the wisest men of France to tremble for the future of their race and nation, for its shrinking population is forcing it from the rank of a first-class power to the humiliation of weakness and decay. Will they listen to France's Macedonian call and the law of love and life written in their womanly natures?
Humanity of the past and present is not final. It shall not cease at the present development. Human society was never static. We are at the beginning of the greatest changes in human history. There will be no shock, but the transforming, silent touch of universal evolution, whose voice speaks thus: "We are the creatures of twilight, but out of our minds and the lineage of our minds will spring minds that will reach forward fearlessly. A day will come—one day in the unending succession of days—when the beings now latent in our thoughts, hidden in our loins, shall stand on this earth as on a footstool, and they shall laugh and reach out their hands among the stars."
It is said that the flower which opens and smiles upon the brink of an abyss is like love, which lives also between two eternities. It is the most human of the passions and at the same time the most divine. It is the most intimate and the most ethereal; it guides the poet when he scales the skies and lifts the soul to celestial raptures.
The gifted and the common mind are alike troubled, agitated and exalted by this divinity who evokes their silent passions and stirs their slumbering fancy.
Many animals change their form and color in the season of love, and man is similarly affected in his psychic nature. Every human and divine element responds to the witchery of the god of love. And new colors in thought and character appear, and the glowing eye glistens with changing smile or tear, like dewdrops on the jewelled face of morn. The first touch of poetry lights up the prosy brain, the first ambitions, brilliant hopes, struggles, flashes of genius, and heroic resolves spring forth like living phantoms at the magic power of this matchless magician of the soul.