Whether early in the days of their marriage or postponed for some months or more out of regard for his wife’s body and beauty, the hour will come when the young husband yearning above her, sees in his wife’s eyes the reflection of the future, and when their mutual longing springs up to initiate the chain of lives which shall repeat throughout the ages the bodily, mental and spiritual beauties of each other, which each holds so dear. Perhaps in lovers’ talk and exquisite whispers they have spoken of this great deed on which they are embarking, and each has voiced that intense yearning which filled them to see another “with your eyes, your hair, your smile,” living and radiant. The lovers dream that they will be repeated in others of their own creation, always young, running through the ages which culminate in the golden glories of the millenium. The dream is so wonderful, the thought that it pictures in the mind so full of vernal beauty, light and vigour that, were facts commensurate with it, its result should spring all ready formed from between the lips of those who breathed its possibilities like Minerva from the head of Jove. It seems incredible that such splendid dominant designs to fulfil God’s purpose should be hindered, and made to bend and toil through the hard material facts of the molecular structure of the world, and that it is only many months afterwards that the first outward body is given to this dream, and that then it is in a form not strong and dancing in lightness and beauty but weak and helpless with many intensely physical necessities which for months and years will require the utmost fostering care or it will be destroyed by material effects, hostile and too strong for it. Yet such is the limitation of our powers of creation. And underneath the intense passion of love and all its rich dreams of beauty is the slow building, chemically molecule by molecule, biologically cell by cell, against obstacles the surmounting of which seems a superhuman feat. Lovers who are parents give to each other the supremest material gift in the world, a material embodiment of celestial dreams which itself has the further power of vital creation. In this and all my work, I speak to the normal, healthy and loving in an endeavour to help them to remain normal, healthy and loving, and thus to perfect their lives. So in this book I do not intend to deal with those whose marriages are mistaken ones, or with those who do not know true love. I write for those who having made a love match are passing together through the ensuing and surprising years, and incidentally doing one of the greatest pieces of work which human beings can do during their progress through this world, and that is creating the next generation.