The old man grew quite serious again. Said he: "I DO remember about
that strange piece of baseless folly, the result, like all other
follies of the period, of the hideous class tyranny which then
obtained. What do we think of it now? you would say. My friend,
that is a question easy to answer. How could it possibly be but that
maternity should be highly honoured amongst us? Surely it is a
matter of course that the natural and necessary pains which the
mother must go through form a bond of union between man and woman, an
extra stimulus to love and affection between them, and that this is
universally recognised. For the rest, remember that all the
ARTIFICIAL burdens of motherhood are now done away with. A mother
has no longer any mere sordid anxieties for the future of her
children. They may indeed turn out better or worse; they may
disappoint her highest hopes; such anxieties as these are a part of
the mingled pleasure and pain which goes to make up the life of
mankind. But at least she is spared the fear (it was most commonly
the certainty) that artificial disabilities would make her children
something less than men and women: she knows that they will live and
act according to the measure of their own faculties. In times past,
it is clear that the 'Society' of the day helped its Judaic god, and
the 'Man of Science' of the time, in visiting the sins of the fathers
upon the children. How to reverse this process, how to take the
sting out of heredity, has for long been one of the most constant
cares of the thoughtful men amongst us. So that, you see, the
ordinarily healthy woman (and almost all our women are both healthy
and at least comely), respected as a child-bearer and rearer of
children, desired as a woman, loved as a companion, unanxious for the
future of her children, has far more instinct for maternity than the
poor drudge and mother of drudges of past days could ever have had;
or than her sister of the upper classes, brought up in affected