THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN.
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and the methods of the various organizations that are endeavoring to remove evil from the pathway of the child.
All grand, all helpful, all necessary, but it often all looks to me like “ locking the barn-door after the horse is stolen.” Yes, we are beating around the bush; but the enemy lies coiled in the very center. The child is stung with evil before it reaches the outer circle where these implements for culture of body and soul stand ready for the using. We must probe deep, to the very heart of things, and commence at the very foundation, before we can hope for any special advance physically, mentally or morally, beyond the present showing of our nation. We have made provision for the training in every profession save the profession of home-makers and parentage. This is all left to chance. The fate of the nation is left to blind chance. The seed of this nation was sown by the church. We had a right to expect wonderful things from such a sowing, but the enemy from the first has been sowing tares from the poisoned weeds of Europe’s humanity. Our country must now look very carefully to the quality of her sowing, or expect to reap the fate of the cultured nations of the past ages. The home was God’s first plant for a nation. Male and female created He—man in His own image—and gave them the high privilege of entering into His last creative act with Him. He gave of all seeds to man, and said, “ plant.” Man has learned to plant with care, according to the last laws given by science, to insure the largest growth, the most perfect specimen, the choicest varieties. He has also learned in the last days that human development the most precious, the one upon which all happiness and progress depends, is governed by the very same scientific laws. There is no progress for any nation beyond the home-line of possibility. I want to give you my thought from two standpoints:
First. The two laws governing development.
Second. Outside aid to development.
I start from the very foundation of the human race—the fathers and the mothers. Could they expect fine results to come by chance?
In the light of today’s revealments a person is criminal who does not look after the purity of the blood that he imparts to another human being. Every institution of learning that fails to provide this instruction for its students, male and female, in different departments, fails to provide a foundation for a higher mental capacity in the coming generations. Higher education is a theme much harped upon at present, but every effort, save in a few exceptional cases, will prove futile for lack of capacities upon which to expend their knowledge. We are far behind the oft-quoted classic Greece in this respect. We have only advanced to Solon’s time. That wise old lawgiver exclaimed: “We can not legislate against luxury, but we can Establish athletic schools that will develop physique and give a martial character to the amusements of our young.” We have in this decade of years advanced this far. When will we attain to the wisdom of Lycurgus?
He prohibited parents from giving their daughters in marriage until they had attained a certain degree of proficiency in certain exercises. He went furtherthan this in his wise recognition of the future needs of the nation. He prohibited marriages among any who were not matured, any who were diseased, or who were deformed, and they looked upon the throwing of a sickly or deformed new-born babe into a ravine to perish as an act of mercy. Exercises for development were compulsory. The pure blood thus engendered fed the nervous tissue, fed the white and gray matter of the brain. The brain thus richly nourished, and in its turn its muscles exercised by questioning, developed the twenty-eight men of the two centuries named whom we cannot equal or surpass today. Lycurgus did well for what we are pleased to term an ignorant past, but his laws after all produced but one Socrates.
I claim that an intelligent present, through the use of two laws, could soon produce oneAvho could answer the questions of Socrates. We have grown quite familiar with one of these two laws through the pens and voices of many, the prenatal law. Rightly understood and used it has the power to modify the effect of poisonous blood.