The next great law of life is the law of race preservation. This law
comprises the instinct to reproduction and the instinct of parental
love. The first and chief function of these instincts in the animal
economy is the perpetuation of the race. The preservation of self
implies and comprehends the preservation of the race.
My first duty to myself is to preserve myself in health and happiness;
but this is best fulfilled and realized in labouring for the health and
happiness of others. If this be the universal law, I also am the
recipient of others' care, therefore probably better tended and
preserved. I save my life by losing it in others.
My second duty, though nominally to Society, is in reality to myself,
and it is to preserve myself by preserving the race to which I belong.
Self-preservation therefore, is the first law of life, race preservation
the second or subsidiary law.
To fulfil this second law, nature has placed on every normal healthy man
and woman the sacred duty of reproducing their kind. Reproduction as a
physiological process promotes, both directly and indirectly, the
health, happiness and longevity of healthy men and women.
Statistics confirm the popular opinion "that the length of life, to the
enjoyment of which a married person may look forward, is greater than
that of the unmarried, both male and female at the same
age.
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