The answer to that argument is that many women exist who
meet all their husbands' needs and satisfy all their instincts, and that
for this end the intensive education of woman's intellect is not a
necessary condition. It may be added that if the race is to rise, the
highest type of women as well as the highest type of men must be its
parents, the mothers being exactly as important as the fathers on the
score of heredity. Any attempt, therefore, to split up womanhood, so
that the lower types shall become the mothers, and the higher the
companions of men, is a directly dysgenic proposal, opposing the great
eugenic principle that the best of both sexes must be the parents of the
future.
When we find, therefore, that marriage under present conditions does
not satisfy many of the highest kinds of women, we must ask whether
their dissatisfaction is warranted, and if, as we do, we find it based
upon the fact that the present conditions are grossly unjust to women,
we must modify those conditions so that, at the very least, the wife and
mother shall not have the worst of them.
Finally, whatever we may fail to achieve because, for instance, of some
fundamental facts of human nature against which it is vain to legislate,
at least we have economic conditions under our control, and control them
we must, so that, whoever shall be in a position of economic insecurity,
at least it shall not be the mothers of the future.
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