of great anxiety but also an
object of instinctive repulsion.

How is it that such a brave and industrious woman can feel repulsion
toward her own child? If the judges had asked themselves this question
and had replied to it without prejudice, forgetting for the moment
their Code and prejudices, they would not have had the courage to
condemn the woman to death, nor even to condemn her at all; for their
conscience would have clearly shown them the true culprits--masculine
brutality, our hypocritical sexual customs, and the unjust laws
inspiring terror in a feeble brain.

When every pregnancy and every birth are looked upon by human society
with honor and respect, when every mother is protected by law and
assisted in the education of her children, then only will society have
the right to judge severely of infanticide.

CHAPTER XIV

MEDICINE AND SEXUAL LIFE

=General Remarks.=--Theology teaches belief in God and a future life;
law represents the application of codified laws and customs, old and
new; medicine is said to be an art--the art of curing sick people.

At the origin of each of these three branches of human activity we
find an acquired idea. Man has been led to the religious idea and to
the worship of one or more gods by his terror of certain unknown and
occult powers superior to his own, and by the idea that his faculty of
knowledge, his power, and the duration of his life were limited.

The origin of law is in moral conscience, a phylogenetic derivative of
the sentiments of sympathy, _i.e._, sentiments of duty and justice,
combined with the idea of the necessity for men to live in societies.

As regards medicine, this owes its existence to the fear of disease,
pain and death, which is modified by the acquired experience that
certain substances may sometimes ease suffering.

Theology, if separated from morality whose domain it has usurped,
lives on mysticism, and endeavors to give it a natural and human
appearance by adorning it with sonorous phraseology. Law, losing sight
of its origin and object of existence, only concerns itself with
comments on the text of laws, and in discussing the application of the
articles of the Code. Medicine has concerned itself too much with the
life of the patient, instead of the improvement of human life in
general.

In order to cure a physical malady, to reestablish abnormal or damaged
functions as far as this is possible, the physician must be acquainted
with