tism, I should be
ashamed of my efforts were I to present as my handiwork nothing better
than the level and plane which Nature has attained.

II

We come into this world a tiny bundle and mass of helpless, feeble
flesh, utterly unprepared to meet the requirements and fearful
conditions that lie in wait for us. We are in need of immediate, urgent
and constant help from those who were responsible for our birth,
imperatively so from our mother.

The child does not ask to come, and knows absolutely nothing about its
welfare. And the mother often does not want to bear it, as she knows
absolutely nothing about maternal cares. And yet that mother must go
through the "shadow of the valley of death" before she can deliver this
tiny bundle and helpless mass of feeble flesh. And how often, aye, only
too often, does the mother _enter_ the valley of death when making
delivery of this living form, never to see the face of the child that
Nature imposed upon her to bear!

What a despicable arrangement!

What an unfair bargain!

Can you imagine a more outlandish, ridiculous, awkward, complicated,
cruel and fearful system of reproduction than that which we are under
yoke to pursue? Without the elaborate details of the perilous stages of
life's development, this is the method of incubation Nature imposes upon
us. Before the birth of a human being, one male and one female--that is,
one man and one woman--must have sexual intercourse. Whether this
intercourse is prompted by all the finer impulses of life or is
accomplished by the savageness of rape makes no difference to Nature's
purpose. To Nature the end justifies the means, and she continues to go
about her business.

The male--that is, the man of this pair--can strut and parade with the
utmost freedom from his responsibility for the result of his act that
Nature has made to be pre-eminent among his desires. But the
female--that is, the woman of this pair--_must for nine months_ (just
think of it!) carry and develop the germ of this child in the fertile
field of her womb, and be subjected to the innumerable terrifying
dangers accompanying such a carriage, and then suffer a superhuman
torture to make the delivery, through a very meager channel of her body,
of this living plant which she has never seen, does not know and quite
often does not want, _but must absolutely bear_!

Provided Nature has not made the creature too deformed and mutilated and
unable to survive, the