Individuals and the present therefore decide what marriages
shall occur; but by some obscure fatality which no one had thought of,
the future appears upon the scene: and when it is actually present, or
rather not only present but visible, the responsibility for it is
recognized. We have not yet gone so far as to see that a girl may be a
good mother, in the highest sense, in her choice of a mate. But as
things are, it is agreed that we are to act like blind automata, as
improvident and irresponsible as the lower fishes, until the actual
birth of the future. The philosophic truth that the future is nascent in
the present--a truth so genuinely philosophic that it is also
practical--is still hidden from us, and thus we are faced, in town and
country alike, with ignorant motherhood, set to the most difficult,
responsible, and expert of tasks--the right nurture of babyhood;
babyhood, a ridiculous subject for grown men, yet somehow the condition
of them and all their doings.
In this state of affairs, those who began the modern campaign against
infant mortality, or rather that small section of them who were not to
be beguiled by secondaries, such as poverty, alcoholism, and the like,
set to work to remedy maternal ignorance. Having been engaged in this
campaign for many years, one is not likely to decry it now, nor is there
any occasion to do so. The movement for the instruction of motherhood
and for the instruction even of girls in the duties of actual
motherhood, is now not only started but making real progress, and will
assuredly prosper.
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