There could hardly be a more appropriate introduction to our remarks on motherhood and marriage than these words of Bachofen's, for there are few human relations whose traditional stages, taking through outside causes and effects an established form, have become eternal law and sacrament, as is the case in the realm of sex relations. Motherhood and marriage! For most people these two conceptions are inseparably bound together, or, rather, are in ratio connected as their ideas of morality and religion are synonymous. Marriage in the Romish Church is a religious sacrament, and in the collective Christian and Jewish worlds the only sex relation acknowledged as customary and possible, is the one based on a monogamous union. To work out logically from this standpoint, the only condition of motherhood which is socially justified, is that one which is the result of marital relations. In consequence motherhood without the consent of the State or the benefit of the clergy is just as logically condemned. And they who thus sit in judgment, flatter themselves to be the prophets of an advanced and enlightened era,--ingrafting their personal feelings and rights on the religious and lawful order of the universe. Or, in common parlance, and as our introduction so aptly put it, these good people wish to intend the domination of the ideas of their own time over all the past and into all the future. Marriage seems to them an everlasting institution, a godly regulation, through which they can lend to their individual bias, the dignity of that which is humanly purest and highest. Consequently it also seems to them that the present form of marriage and its accompanying conditions for motherhood, resting as these do on the mutual consent of God and man, that these are to be in all eternity the permanent form of sex relation. But when we stop one moment only, to free ourselves from preconceived and obsolete ideas, and look at motherhood and marriage from the calm and unprejudiced standpoint of historical development and growth, how differently do these in reality appear. Many advanced thinkers have done this, and their views have here and there found adherents. Not so, however, with the average seeker for light and truth, who if he wish to succeed must stem the tide of prejudiced opinion. But the day has come when, if all signs do not fail, spring is here, and a thousand and one buds of promise are pushing toward the light, when a wider and saner understanding of motherhood and marriage is at hand. And it is not an untimely spring either, not one which the treacherous sun of January calls forth only to blight with later snow and frost. No, it is the real light and life-giving spring, which comes when the sap begins to run, when the sun calls up smoky mists from out the brown earth, ready to enclose the seed, which shall bring forth summer flowers and autumn fruits.