ervous" or irritable in temper, both
jealously inclined, or are morbid and melancholy, you need not be
surprised at an intensifying of these qualities in your little ones.

If there are more serious family traits, such as insanity, epilepsy,
alcoholism and the like, it might even be your duty never to run the
risk of their transmission.

I once spoke on heredity when in the audience sat a young man by the
side of his _fiancee_, who, I was afterwards told, had been in an
insane asylum three times, and yet he purposed marrying her.

I know a clergyman who has wisely dedicated himself to a celibate life
because there is marked insanity in his family.

You chafe a little under this reiteration of the duty you owe to
children yet unborn, and who may possibly never exist, and perhaps you
say, as I have heard girls say, "Oh, I don't mean to have any
children;" and perhaps you add, "I don't see why people may not marry
and be happy just by themselves without having children."

It is not strange that you should not understand all that is involved
in such a statement. It is true that some married people do not have
children, and are comparatively happy, and yet perhaps if we could
read their hearts we should find that the one great longing of their
lives is for the blessing of a child.

It is natural to desire to know the joys of parenthood. In the home,
through the cares and love, the anxiety, self-sacrifice, tenderness
and patience which accompany parenthood, the education of the
individual is made most complete and perfect.

The girl who marries without a willingness to accept these
responsibilities is willing to sacrifice that which, rightly borne,
will bring her the highest development. If she purposes deliberately
to avoid motherhood she puts herself in a position of moral peril, for
such immunity is not often secured except at the risk of criminality.
I say not often, although I believe that if husband and wife are
actuated by the worthy motive of not inflicting on posterity some
dower of woe, they are justified in a marriage that does not
contemplate parenthood, if they are of lofty purpose enough to live
solely in mental and spiritual companionship. But all attempts to
secure the pleasure of a physical relation and escape its legitimate
results are a menace to the health and a degradation to the moral
nature. This subject, and the questions arising therefrom, will be
discussed more fully in the next book of this