can understand me better than
you would seem to do, judging by your words and your silence."

Said I: "Perhaps that is so; but people putting in practice commonly this
sense of interest in the ordinary occupations of life rather startles me.
I will ask you a question or two presently about that. But I want to
return to the position of women amongst you. You have studied the
'emancipation of women' business of the nineteenth century: don't you
remember that some of the 'superior' women wanted to emancipate the more
intelligent part of their sex from the bearing of children?"

The old man grew quite serious again. Said he: "I _do_ remember about
that strange piece of baseless folly, the result, like all other follies
of the period, of the hideous class tyranny which then obtained. What do
we think of it now? you would say. My friend, that is a question easy to
answer. How could it possibly be but that maternity should be highly
honoured amongst us? Surely it is a matter of course that the natural
and necessary pains which the mother must go through form a bond of union
between man and woman, an extra stimulus to love and affection between
them, and that this is universally recognised. For the rest, remember
that all the _artificial_ burdens of motherhood are now done away with. A
mother has no longer any mere sordid anxieties for the future of her
children. They may indeed turn out better or worse; they may disappoint
her highest hopes; such anxieties as these are a part of the mingled
pleasure and pain which goes to make up the life of mankind. But at
least she is spared the fear (it was most commonly the certainty) that
artificial disabilities would make her children something less than men
and women: she knows that they will live and act according to the measure
of their own faculties. In times past, it is clear that the 'Society' of
the day helped its Judaic god, and the 'Man of Science' of the time, in
visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children. How to reverse this
process, how to take the sting out of heredity, has for long been one of
the most constant cares of the thoughtful men amongst us. So that, you
see, the ordinarily healthy woman (and almost all our women are both
healthy and at least comely), respected as a child-bearer and rearer of
children, desired as a woman, loved as a companion, unanxious for the
future of her children, has far more instinct for maternity than the poor
drudge a