The character of individual and social man, and the destiny of the race, are wrapped up in Maternity. Shall a function so replete with suffering and responsibility be imposed on woman, against her prayers and her tears, merely for the momentary gratification of man? Manhood as well as womanhood, cries out against the outrage. All that is true and noble in man says, “Forbear!” Only that which is sensual, brutal, devilish, can perpetrate this wrong against the mother and child, or approve of it.
Woman would find rest and fulness of joy in man. She rushes to him as to her tower of strength, to shelter and be sheltered to love and be loved, to bless and be blessed. A love that knows no fear, a trust that fears no danger, lay her in his bosom, and prompt to and consecrate the entire surrender of her soul and body to his manly keeping. Will you call that man true, noble or honorable, who can take advantage of a love so pure and a trust so boundless, to impose on her a suffering and anguish, and a responsibility, for which she is not prepared, and from which her soul shrinks; thus placing her in an unnatural position in regard to her child, and thus outraging his own offspring, by giving it an existence loathed even by the mother who give it birth? What shall be said of the man who will commit a deed so atrocious? A husband he is not; he ignores the first principles of a true and noble manhood. He is but a selfish, disgusting sensualist. A father he is not, deserving tender and loving reverence from his wife, but an ANIMAL, whose brutal gratification is the first law of life, and one whom neither mother nor child can respect.
But I will reserve further remarks on this subject until my next letter.
Thine, H. C. W.
LETTER IV.
THE CRIME AGAINST THE CHILD, AS AFFECTING ITS ANTE-NATAL EDUCATION.
Dear Friend:
In the preceding letter, I have shown how, and to what extent, a maternity, undesigned by the father and undesired by the mother, affects the organization, character and destiny, of the child. I wish to pursue the question still further.
Life is before you,—a long and happy one, I trust. May it increase in goodness and usefulness as it does in years! Your power is great, and will be greater. Already the minds of thousands are deeply and permanently influenced by you. I know that Man, and not institutions or dogmas, is the object of your devotion; that the all-controlling, ever present sentiment of your life is, the supremacy of man over his incidents. I know that you reverence man, not his incidents. You feel, and in your life seek to embody the truth, that man is eternal, his institutions transient and ever-changing. Man is the great fact; his religious, social, governmental, ecclesiastical, literary, monetary and commercial surroundings are merely passing incidents of his existence, to be changed or cast away as suits his growth and convenience. Man is the substance, all else the shadow. The appendages will be laid aside, but man will live, deathless as God. You would never sacrifice man to his incidents; the head to the hat, or the body to the coat,—the enduring substance to the passing shadow.
You see and worship God in man, not in his incidents. In those relations which bear most directly and powerfully on the development, purity and nobility of your manhood, and on your character and destiny, you recognize the most perfect manifestation of the Divine presence and power. In them, the great thinking intellect and pulsating heart of the universe,—the God-element of Nature,—speak to you as in nothing else.
Of all your relations, which is most potent to develop your manhood, to unfold to yourself, and to all, the hidden wealth and depths of your being; to vitalize and call into manly activity all the powers of your physical and intellectual nature? Your soul promptly answers, “That of the HUSBAND and the FATHER.” No man who has lived in those relations can doubt the truth of your answer. God speaks to you through your wife and child, as through no other being of the past or present. Through those loved ones, He, as it were, renders himself visible, audible, tangible to you, and you meet him and talk with him face to face. They are his natural prophets and messiahs to you—the media through which the God-element of the universe flows into you, quickening and vitalizing, and arousing to energetic activity, all the powers of your manhood. Through them, an influence is thrown upon and around you, which silently, but surely, defines and shapes your plans of life, and quickens, expands, and ennobles your affections. In them, a Presence is ever before you, whose beauty and brightness illuminate your pathway, and which is ever beckoning you onward and upward, and breathing into your soul a desire and a daring to reach the sublimest height of purity and nobleness. In truth, you may say, in your wife and child are the hidings of God’s power, to form your character and shape your destiny.