Medical and Hygienic Necessity of Control of Conception—­Preventive Methods—­Abortion—­The New Doctrine of the Duty to Practice Abortion—­How Far is this Justifiable?—­Castration as a Method of Controlling Procreation—­Negative Eugenics and Positive Eugenics—­The Question of Certificates for Marriage—­The Inadequacy of Eugenics by Act of Parliament—­The Quickening of the Social Conscience in Regard to Heredity—­Limitations to the Endowment of Motherhood—­The Conditions Favorable to Procreation—­Sterility—­The Question of Artificial Fecundation—­The Best Age of Procreation—­The Question of Early Motherhood—­The Best Time for Procreation—­The Completion of the Divine Cycle of Life.

CHAPTER I.

THE MOTHER AND HER CHILD.

The Child’s Right to Choose Its Ancestry—­How This is Effected—­The Mother the Child’s Supreme Parent—­Motherhood and the Woman Movement—­The Immense Importance of Motherhood—­Infant Mortality and Its Causes—­The Chief Cause in the Mother—­The Need of Rest During Pregnancy—­Frequency of Premature Birth—­The Function of the State—­Recent Advance in Puericulture—­The Question of Coitus During Pregnancy—­The Need of Rest During Lactation—­The Mother’s Duty to Suckle Her Child—­The Economic Question—­The Duty of the State—­Recent Progress in the Protection of the Mother—­The Fallacy of State Nurseries.

A man’s sexual nature, like all else that is most essential in him, is rooted in a soil that was formed very long before his birth.  In this, as in every other respect, he draws the elements of his life from his ancestors, however new the recombination may be and however greatly it may be modified by subsequent conditions.  A man’s destiny stands not in the future but in the past.  That, rightly considered, is the most vital of all vital facts.  Every child thus has a right to choose his own ancestors.  Naturally he can only do this vicariously, through his parents.  It is the most serious and sacred duty of the future father to choose one half of the ancestral and hereditary character of his future child; it is the most serious and sacred duty of the future mother to make a similar choice.[1] In choosing each other they have between them chosen the whole ancestry of their child.  They have determined the stars that will rule his fate.

In the past that fateful determination has usually been made helplessly, ignorantly, almost unconsciously.  It has either been guided by an instinct which, on the whole, has worked out fairly well, or controlled by economic interests of the results of which so much cannot be said, or left to the risks of lower than bestial chances which can produce nothing but evil.  In the future we cannot but have faith—­for all the hope of humanity must rest on that faith—­that a new guiding impulse, reinforcing natural instinct and becoming in time an inseparable accompaniment of it, will lead civilized man on his racial course.