One's duty to society is a
higher duty than to one's-self, but the lower duty comes first in our
present stage of racial evolution. Instinct prompts to the one,
reason--a higher and later, but less respected, faculty--prompts to the
other.
But it can be shown that from an egoistic standpoint my duty to the
State in this regard is my highest duty to myself.
The parental sacrifice necessary in rearing the normal number of
children is infinitesimal compared with the parental advantage.
Parental love is a passion as well as an instinct in normal men and
women, and the full play of this passion in its natural state is
productive of the greatest happiness.
Vice may restrain, replace, or smother it, but nothing else can damage
or adulterate this powerful passion in the human heart.
Low level selfishness, love of low level luxury, diseased imaginings,
and unreasonable dreads and fears, are some of the forms of vice that
smother this noble passion.
The pursuit of happiness and the higher forms of selfishness would
naturally point to parentage.
The ectasy of parental love, the sweet response from little ones that
rises as the fragrance of lovely flowers, self-realization in the
comfort and joy of family life, the parental pride in the contemplation
of effulgent youth, the sympathetic partnership in success, the repose
of old age surrounded by filial manhood and womanhood, all go to make a
surplus of pleasure over pain, that no other way of life can possibly
supply.
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