Let us examine this view; but, first let us examine the sense of sanctity itself--see what part it holds in our psychology. In the first dawn of these emotions of reverence and sanctity, while man was yet a savage, the priest-craft of the day forced upon the growing racial mind a sense of darkness and mystery, a system of "tabu"--of "that which is forbidden." In China still, as term of high respect, the imperial seat of government is called "the Forbidden City." To the dim thick early mind, reverence was confounded with mystery and restriction. Today, in ever-growing light, with microscope and telescope and Röntgen ray, we are learning the true reverence that follows knowledge, and outgrowing that which rests on ignorance. The savage reveres a thing because he cannot understand it--we revere because we can understand. The ancient sacred must be covered up; to honour king or god you must shut your eyes, hide your face, fall prostrate. The modern sacred must be shown and known of all, and honoured by understanding and observance. Let not our sense of sanctity shrink so sensitively from the searcher; if the home is really sacred, it can bear the light. So now for these "sacred processes of reproduction." (Protest. "We did not say 'reproduction,' we said 'maternity!'") And what is maternity but one of nature's processes of reproduction? Maternity and paternity and the sweet conscious duties and pleasures of human child-rearing are only more sacred than reproduction by fission, by parthenogenesis, by any other primitive device, because they are later in the course of evolution, so higher in the true measure of growth; and for that very reason education, the social function of child-rearing, is higher than maternity; later, more developed, more valuable, and so more sacred. Maternity is common to all animals--but we do not hold it sacred, in them. We have stultified motherhood most brutally in two of our main food products--milk and eggs--exploiting this function remorselessly to our own appetites. In humanity, in some places and classes we do hold it sacred, however. Why? "Because it is the highest, sweetest, best thing we know!" will be eagerly answered. Is it--really? Is it better than Liberty, better than Justice, better than Art, Government, Science, Industry, Religion? How can that function which is common to savage, barbarian, peasant, to all kinds and classes, low and high, be nobler, sweeter, better, than those late-come, hard-won, slowly developed processes which make men greater, wiser, kinder, stronger from age to age? The "sacred duties of maternity" reproduce the race, but they do nothing to improve it. Is it not more sacred to teach right conduct for instance, as a true preacher does, than to feed one's own child as does the squaw? Grant that both are sacred--that all right processes are sacred--is not the relative sanctity up and out along the line of man's improvement?