Earlier civilizations often dealt with the excessive births resulting from blind or coerced parenthood by destroying the children as infants after birth. This was done directly, and often by her leading citizens, in Greece (one of the highest forms of civilization ever attained) and _still_ infanticide direct or indirect goes on among all the populous races of the world. Where the value placed on the mother’s mental and physical suffering is low, one may still see motherhood, not as a fine, voluntary and glorious act of self-sacrifice from the highest possible motives of love and service directly to the beloved, and indirectly to the race, but as the exploitation of a trapped and helpless sacrifice. Mothers will say that their babies are their greatest joys; one may ask, therefore, how I can use the word “sacrifice” in connection with motherhood. The use of the word is just, and based on truths too generally concealed by those who know them, and far too generally unknown by those who ought to know them. Ignorance of their extent has made men callous, indifferent or ribald towards the profound sacrifices of motherhood. Few there be, however, who do not know of the agonizing torments of actual birth. The Bible is read aloud in churches, and in its wording there is some recognition of the existence of this agony, although based upon earlier and simpler civilizations in which the women were probably better cared for and better fitted for motherhood than the majority of women are to-day. Following biblical tradition, the memory of the agony of birth is generally portrayed as being wiped out by the supreme joy in the child which follows. To-day, however, this effacement of the anguish is by no means universal, and the abiding horror of the birth is so great that not a few women refuse to bear another child. Then men, who cannot even imagine the experience of child-bearing, denounce such a mother, rate her and hold her up to derision. How little do they realize that in her they may see Nature’s working of the laws of evolution (see p. 24).