individual. When such a motive is seriously entertained it is pragmatic,
_i. e._, it serves a useful end, or at least the conceptions which it
embodies are entertained because they are thought to be of the highest
value to the race.

As mental development continues, these more fundamental and primitive
motives cease to be all absorbing. Eventually, the subject of the food
supply becomes less pressing. Races continue to increase and multiply
with or without the performance of sacred rites and man begins to
question the utility of his imitative magic. Higher desires force
themselves into consciousness, and earlier motives are no longer
outwardly expressed; the form of the early motives is retained however:
usages, symbols and practices which have long ceased to be dynamic and
whose meaning is entirely forgotten are still observed; so we see
evidences of primitive racial motives cropping up in all sorts of ways
in later civilization.

But to say that the earlier motives are no longer outwardly expressed is
not to infer that they do not exist. Fundamental as they are in our
mental development, they enter into our general personality and become a
part of our makeup. How is the motive expressed in sex worship a part of
our motives and feelings of today? Superficially it does not appear to
be present, but a little reflexion shows that it is there. It has become
so much a part of us that we scarcely recognize its presence, the
instinct to reproduce being common to everyone. Every woman feels this
to be her duty,--her religious duty if the dictum of the Church is to be
followed:

"Lo, children are an heritage of the Lord; and the fruit of the womb is
his reward. As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man; so are children
of the youth. Happy is the man that has his quiver full of them; they
shall not be ashamed, but they shall speak with the enemies in the
gate." _Psalm 127._

During earlier times barrenness was regarded as a curse, and many charms
were in use to counteract this calamity. A sentence from a letter of
Julia Ward Howe to her young sister about to be married, affords an apt
reference to this sense of duty: "Marriage, like death, is a debt we owe
to nature, and though it costs us something to pay it, yet we are more
content and better established in peace when we have paid it." The
feeling associated with the command "to increase and multiply" is so
much a part of our innermost thoughts and feelings that further