hrough the instrumentality of the first savage
Mother, of a new and beautiful social state--Domesticity. . . . One
day there appears in this roofless room that which is to teach the
teachers of the world--a Little Child.' --HENRY DRUMMOND.

'Every good woman is by nature a mother, and finds best in
maternity her social and moral salvation. She shall be saved in
child-bearing.' --GRANT ALLEN.

'Children are a man's power and his honour.' --HOBBES.

I

TO BEGET OR NOT TO BEGET--THE QUESTION OF THE DAY

'Marriage is therefore rooted in family rather than family in
marriage.' --WESTERMARCK.

If we could leave children out of the question, the readjustment of the
conjugal conditions would be simple enough. But Amoret has truly called
this problem 'the _cul-de-sac_ of all reforms.' Any system, whatever its
form, whether leasehold marriage, free love, polygamy, polyandry, or
duogamy--any scheme that tends to confuse the fatherhood of the child,
or deprive the child of the solid advantages of a permanent home--is
hopeless from the start. This, however, obviously applies only to the
couples who have children. Formerly those who married expected to have a
family, and were disappointed if this hope were not fulfilled. That it
was possible to limit the number of their offspring, or even to avoid
parenthood entirely, was of course unknown to them. Nowadays all this is
changed, and the doctrines of Malthus obtain everywhere.

Bernard Shaw says: 'The artificial sterilisation of matrimony is the
most revolutionary discovery of the nineteenth century.' It certainly
makes possible the revolutionary suggestions about marriage, or rather
_would_ make them more feasible if the 'discovery' were universally put
into practice.

Let us take it then, that where children are desired no relaxation of
our present marriage system is advisable, and that people who wish to
experiment in new matrimonial schemes must resolutely avoid the
'_cul-de-sac_ of all reforms,' and remain childless.

To beget or not to beget--that is the question nowadays, and a very
vexed question it is. There is hardly a subject on which opinions are
more diversified. Some people regard parenthood as the most horrible
disaster; others think that to die without creating is to have lived
uselessly. I heard a woman say once: 'I hate children; it's much better
to keep a few dear dogs,' and she was not an ignorant or devitalised
girl, but a h