He may declare that
motherhood is hideously illegitimate when it is forced upon a wife
married to an inebriate degenerate. He may accept marriage with all his
heart as an institution which for him has natural sanctions millions of
years older than any Church or State or mankind itself. But for him as a
student of life all motherhood must be guarded as such--even if it be
guarded in such a fashion that it can never recur, which is our duty to
the feeble-minded mother.
If there be any reader who is unacquainted with M. Maeterlinck's "Life
of the Bee," let him or her study that instructive book. Let him ask why
the queen is the End of the hive, why all is for her. Let him ask
whether the natural law upon which this depends--the law that all
individuals are mortal--does not apply to all races, even our own, and
perhaps he will come to agree that the rights of mothers are the oldest
and deepest and most necessary of any rights that can be named.
And the recognition and granting of them--as they must necessarily be
recognized and granted in every living race that depends upon
motherhood--is even more imperative in our case than in any other, since
human motherhood makes more demands upon the individual than any other.
By our constitution we human beings must devote more of our energies to
the Future than any other race. But it is a Future better worth working
for than any of theirs.
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