PREGNANCY
And now just a few words about having children, and this treatise will end.
As has already been said, every true husband and wife who are well enough and strong enough, and who are reasonably furnished with this world's goods, ought to have and rear at least two children. The world needs at least so many, even if all children lived and grew up, to keep up the constant number of people on the earth. But, far more than this, the husband and wife need children to make a home complete, and a complete home is the supreme attainment of human life!
This does not mean that people should not marry unless they can have children; there are many women who should never even try to become mothers. But these should not be deprived of all sexual joys for this reason. On the contrary, it is for their best good, in most cases, that they should marry and so live normal sex lives, in all respects except parenthood.
But, for the most part, husbands and wives can have children, if they so desire, and they SHOULD so desire.
And, so desiring, the question is, How can they best fulfil such desire?
As a matter of fact, there is very little that is really known about the begetting of children, and the securing of the best results from such action. The laws of human heredity are, as yet, for the most part, unknown. But common sense would seem to indicate a few things that must be best in the premises.
Thus, it would seem to be for the best that the husband and wife should be in good physical condition when a child is begotten. More than this, it would seem right that the act of begetting should be a deliberate, and not a mere chance begetting. Hence, in general, it is well for the husband and wife to agree upon a time for the begetting of a child, and deliberately accomplish a sex-meeting for such purpose. Although, one instinctively feels that such a deliberate meeting might be too matter of fact—too cold and formal, lacking in warm blood and genuine emotion; still, the probabilities are that even this could be overcome, if kept in mind and "provided for."
Referring to the things that have already been said, of course an embrace which is to result in pregnancy should be one of the most perfect that can possibly be experienced, one in which, in an ecstasy of love's delight, husband and wife merge their souls and bodies into a perfect oneness—it would seem that from such a meeting the best, and only the best results could come.
And so if the husband and wife will agree that from a given time on, they will cease to have a care to prevent conception; and then, sometime immediately following the fifth day after the beginning of the menstrual flow, they will naturally meet in a perfect embrace, the probabilities are that they will have done the best possible to secure the highest attainable results from the act of begetting a child.