I see a
good deal of first-rate maternal ability and sagacity spending
itself on bees and poultry and village schools and cottage
hospitals; and I find myself repeatedly asking myself why this
valuable strain in the national breed should be sterilized.
Unfortunately, the very women whom we should tempt to become
mothers for the good of the race are the very last people to press
their services on their country in that way. Plato long ago
pointed out the importance of being governed by men with
sufficient sense of responsibility and comprehension of public
duties to be very reluctant to undertake the work of governing;
and yet we have taken his instruction so little to heart that we
are at present suffering acutely from government by gentlemen who
will stoop to all the mean shifts of electioneering and incur all
its heavy expenses for the sake of a seat in Parliament. But what
our sentimentalists have not yet been told is that exactly the
same thing applies to maternity as to government. The best mothers
are not those who are so enslaved by their primitive instincts
that they will bear children no matter how hard the conditions
are, but precisely those who place a very high price on their
services, and are quite prepared to become old maids if the price
is refused, and even to feel relieved at their escape.
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