co-education of the sexes is added to their identical education,--then
the sterilizing influence of such a training, acting with tenfold more
force upon the female than upon the male, will go on, and the race
will be propagated from its inferior classes.[28] The stream of life
that is to flow into the future will be Celtic rather than American:
it will come from the collieries, and not from the peerage.
Fortunately, the reverse of this picture is equally possible. The race
holds its destinies in its own hands. The highest wisdom will secure
the survival and propagation of the fittest. Physiology teaches that
this result, the attainment of which our hopes prophecy, is to be
secured, not by an identical education, or an identical co-education
of the sexes, but by _a special and appropriate education, that shall
produce a just and harmonious development of every part_.

Let one remark be made here. It has been asserted that the chief
reason why the higher and educated classes have smaller families than
the lower and uneducated is, that the former criminally prevent or
destroy increase. The pulpit,[29] as well as the medical press, has
cried out against this enormity. That a disposition to do this thing
exists, and is often carried into effect, is not to be denied, and
cannot be too strongly condemned. On the other hand, it should be
proclaimed, to the credit and honor of our cultivated women, and as a
reproach to the identical education of the sexes, that many of them
bear in silence the accusation of self-tampering, who are denied the
oft-prayed-for trial, blessing, and responsibility of offspring. As a
matter of personal experience, my advice has been much more frequently
and earnestly sought by those of our best classes who desired to know
how to obtain, than by those who wished to escape, the offices of
maternity.