again we shall find as we ponder the individual
questions we are here concerned with, that at all points they ultimately
converge towards this same racial end.

Since we have here, therefore, to follow out the sexual relationships of
the individual as they bear on society, it will be convenient at this
point to put aside the questions of ancestry and to accept the individual
as, with hereditary constitution already determined, he lies in his
mother's womb.

It is the mother who is the child's supreme parent. At various points in
zooelogical evolution it has seemed possible that the functions that we now
know as those of maternity would be largely and even equally shared by the
male parent. Nature has tried various experiments in this direction, among
the fishes, for instance, and even among birds. But reasonable and
excellent as these experiments were, and though they were sufficiently
sound to secure their perpetuation unto this day, it remains true that it
was not along these lines that Man was destined to emerge. Among all the
mammal predecessors of Man, the male is an imposing and important figure
in the early days of courtship, but after conception has once been secured
the mother plays the chief part in the racial life. The male must be
content to forage abroad and stand on guard when at home in the
ante-chamber of the family. When she has once been impregnated the female
animal angrily rejects the caresses she had welcomed so coquettishly
before, and even in Man the place of the father at the birth of his child
is not a notably dignified or comfortable one. Nature accords the male but
a secondary and comparatively humble place in the home, the breeding-place
of the race; he may compensate himself if he will, by seeking adventure
and renown in the world outside. The mother is the child's supreme parent,
and during the period from conception to birth the hygiene of the future
man can only be affected by influences which work through her.

Fundamental and elementary as is the fact of the predominant position of
the mother in relation to the life of the race, incontestable as it must
seem to all those who have traversed the volumes of these _Studies_ up to
the present point, it must be admitted that it has sometimes been
forgotten or ignored. In the great ages of humanity it has indeed been
accepted as a central and sacred fact. In classic Rome at one period the
house of the pregnant woman was adorned with garlands