II
We come into this world a tiny bundle and mass of helpless, feeble flesh, utterly unprepared to meet the requirements and fearful conditions that lie in wait for us. We are in need of immediate, urgent and constant help from those who were responsible for our birth, imperatively so from our mother.
The child does not ask to come, and knows absolutely nothing about its welfare. And the mother often does not want to bear it, as she knows absolutely nothing about maternal cares. And yet that mother must go through the "shadow of the valley of death" before she can deliver this tiny bundle and helpless mass of feeble flesh. And how often, aye, only too often, does the mother enter the valley of death when making delivery of this living form, never to see the face of the child that Nature imposed upon her to bear!
What a despicable arrangement!
What an unfair bargain!
Can you imagine a more outlandish, ridiculous, awkward, complicated, cruel and fearful system of reproduction than that which we are under yoke to pursue? Without the elaborate details of the perilous stages of life's development, this is the method of incubation Nature imposes upon us. Before the birth of a human being, one male and one female—that is, one man and one woman—must have sexual intercourse. Whether this intercourse is prompted by all the finer impulses of life or is accomplished by the savageness of rape makes no difference to Nature's purpose. To Nature the end justifies the means, and she continues to go about her business.
The male—that is, the man of this pair—can strut and parade with the utmost freedom from his responsibility for the result of his act that Nature has made to be pre-eminent among his desires. But the female—that is, the woman of this pair—must for nine months (just think of it!) carry and develop the germ of this child in the fertile field of her womb, and be subjected to the innumerable terrifying dangers accompanying such a carriage, and then suffer a superhuman torture to make the delivery, through a very meager channel of her body, of this living plant which she has never seen, does not know and quite often does not want, but must absolutely bear!
Provided Nature has not made the creature too deformed and mutilated and unable to survive, the mother must, during a period of constant care and outward carriage, bear this feeble infant for another period of nine months or more!—suckling at her breast for food!