to an end well before the age of twenty-five, so that she could then, unhampered by child-bearing and mature in experience, be free to enter on such wider activities in the world as she might be fitted for.

Such an arrangement of the procreative life of women would, obviously, only be a variation, and would probably be unsuited for the majority.  Every case must be judged on its own merits.  The best age for procreation will probably continue to be regarded as being, for most women, around the age of twenty.  But at a time like the present, when there is an unfortunate tendency for motherhood to be unduly delayed, it becomes necessary to insist on the advantages, in many cases, of early motherhood.

There are other conditions favorable or unfavorable to procreation which it is now unnecessary to discuss in detail, since they have already been incidentally dealt with in previous volumes of these Studies.  There is, for instance, the question of the time of year and the time of the menstrual cycle which may most properly be selected for procreation.[466] The best period is probably that when sexual desire is strongest, which is the period when conception would appear, as a matter of fact, most often to occur.  This would be in spring or early summer,[467] and immediately after (or shortly before) the menstrual period.  The Chinese have observed that the last day of menstruation and the two following days—­corresponding to the period of oestrus—­constitute the most favorable time for fecundation, and Bossi, of Genoa, has found that the great majority of successes in both natural and artificial fecundation occur at this period.[468] Soranus, as well as the Talmud, assigned the period about menstruation as the best for impregnation, and Susruta, the Indian physician, said that at this time pregnancy most readily occurs because then the mouth of the womb is open, like the flower of the water-lily to the sunshine.

We have now at last reached the point from which we started, the moment of conception, and the child again lies in its mother’s womb.  There remains no more to be said.  The divine cycle of life is completed.

FOOTNOTES: 

[421] Spencer and Gillen, Northern Tribes of Central Australia, p. 330.

[422] Academy of Medicine of Paris, March 31, 1908.

[423] The Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas, vol. ii, p. 405.

[424] Population and Progress, p. 41.

[425] Cf.  Reibmayr, Entwicklungsgeschichte des Talentes und Genics, Bd.  II, p. 31.

[426] “The debt that we owe to those who have gone before us,” says Haycraft (Darwinism and Race Progress, p. 160), “we can only repay to those who come after us.”

[427] Mardrus, Les Mille Nuits, vol. xvi, p. 158.

[428] Sidney Webb, Popular Science Monthly, 1906, p. 526 (previously published in the London Times, Oct. 11, 16, 1906).  In Ch.  IX of the present volume it has already been necessary to discuss the meaning of the term, “morality.”