Yet there are still a few young women of good natural disposition who refuse to be the slaves of fashion and rebel against the clamour of other women, who fulfil the sweet task imposed on them by nature.  Would that the reward in store for them might draw others to follow their example.  My conclusion is based upon plain reason, and upon facts I have never seen disputed; and I venture to promise these worthy mothers the firm and steadfast affection of their husbands and the truly filial love of their children and the respect of all the world.  Child-birth will be easy and will leave no ill-results, their health will be strong and vigorous, and they will see their daughters follow their example, and find that example quoted as a pattern to others.

No mother, no child; their duties are reciprocal, and when ill done by the one they will be neglected by the other.  The child should love his mother before he knows what he owes her.  If the voice of instinct is not strengthened by habit it soon dies, the heart is still-born.  From the outset we have strayed from the path of nature.

There is another by-way which may tempt our feet from the path of nature.  The mother may lavish excessive care on her child instead of neglecting him; she may make an idol of him; she may develop and increase his weakness to prevent him feeling it; she wards off every painful experience in the hope of withdrawing him from the power of nature, and fails to realise that for every trifling ill from which she preserves him the future holds in store many accidents and dangers, and that it is a cruel kindness to prolong the child’s weakness when the grown man must bear fatigue.

Thetis, so the story goes, plunged her son in the waters of Styx to make him invulnerable.  The truth of this allegory is apparent.  The cruel mothers I speak of do otherwise; they plunge their children into softness, and they are preparing suffering for them, they open the way to every kind of ill, which their children will not fail to experience after they grow up.

Fix your eyes on nature, follow the path traced by her.  She keeps children at work, she hardens them by all kinds of difficulties, she soon teaches them the meaning of pain and grief.  They cut their teeth and are feverish, sharp colics bring on convulsions, they are choked by fits of coughing and tormented by worms, evil humours corrupt the blood, germs of various kinds ferment in it, causing dangerous eruptions.  Sickness and danger play the chief part in infancy.  One half of the children who are born die before their eighth year.  The child who has overcome hardships has gained strength, and as soon as he can use his life he holds it more securely.