the
principle is. Now in this particular case our principle is that the
cause of the future must not be betrayed, and the essential argument of
this chapter is that faithfulness to the cause of the future does not
involve, as is commonly supposed, any denial of the interests of the
present, since, as I maintain, he who is best worth choosing as a
partner for life is in general best worth choosing as a father of the
future.

Now what one must here reckon with is the existence of individual
cases,--much commoner doubtless in the imagination of critics than in
reality, but nevertheless worthy of study--where a man may gain a
woman's love of the real kind and may return it, and yet may be unfit
for parenthood. The converse case is equally likely, but here we are
concerned especially with the interests of the woman. She is, shall we
say, a nurse in a sanatorium for consumptives or, to suppose a case more
critical and complicated still, she may herself be a patient in such a
sanatorium. There she meets another patient with whom she falls in love.
Now these two may be well fitted to make each other happy for so long as
fate permits, but if the interests of the future are to be considered
they should not become parents. I must not be taken as here assenting
to the old view, dating from a time when nothing was known of the
disease, which regards consumption as hereditary. It is evident that
quite apart from that question the couple of whom we are thinking should
not become parents. It is possible that the disease may be completely
cured, and the situation will then be altered. But only too often the
patient's life will be much shortened and children will be left
fatherless; they also in certain circumstances will run a grave risk of
being infected by living with consumptive parents. If in the case we are
supposing the woman be also consumptive, it is extremely probable that
motherhood on her part would aggravate and hasten the course of the
disease, it being well-known that pregnancy has an extremely
unfavourable influence on consumption in the majority of cases.

Many other parallel cases may be imagined. Woman's love, based perhaps
mainly upon the maternal instinct of tenderness, may be called forth by
a man who suffers from, shall we say, haemophilia or the bleeding
disease. He may be in every way the best of men, worthy to make any
woman happy; but if he becomes the father of a son, it will probably be
to inflict great cr