It is, in most cases, wiser for husband and wife to fill their home with little children for two reasons. In the first place, through the care of children (the care of their minds and souls not less than of their bodies), each forgets self and learns the A B C of that great lesson in ministry which alone will make universal brotherhood possible upon the face of the earth. Because these sacrifices are more inevitable to the mother than to the father, she is likely to learn this lesson more speedily, and perhaps that is one reason why the Ego clothes itself now in one sex and now in another in the course of its earthly experiences. Perhaps it is that we may learn this lesson of sacrifice well that the newly embodied soul inflicts upon the builders of its physical body such agonies, sacrifices, and anxieties, that their souls seem to be torn up by the very roots, only to be planted, when quiet comes again, upon a higher plateau and in an atmosphere less dense. Emerson has said truly, "Infancy conforms to nobody; all conform to it." Under existing conditions the lesson of selflessness will have to be learned by most of us through this very differentiation of sex, and we may make as much ado about it as we please. We may learn it through the agony and the terror of a Hetty Sorrel or a Margaret, both of whom were examples of extreme selfishness; we may accept it gracefully, as do the average man and woman, with a very faint comprehension of what it all means; or we may welcome and glorify parenthood as the Madonna glorified it, prophesy of that future time when every child shall be the child of an immaculate conception. "Help nature and work on with her, and nature shall regard thee as one of her creators and make obeisance."[2] The second reason why the selfish person is delaying his own advancement by refusing to fulfill the duties that he tacitly accepts by marriage is very prosaic. We all like to assure ourselves that we are rays of the Infinite, channels through which alone the God-message may be brought to mankind. That is very inspiring. But it is not so inspiring to reflect that we are also the gateways, self-appointed by the very estate of marriage, through which other souls, more advanced than ourselves perhaps, may come into the physical embodiment which they need for future experience. That is quite another thing, and all the old self which binds our souls rebels. For this means, to a great degree, the sacrifice of our social pleasures, our recreations, time, money, physical ease, perhaps health; it means broken rest, disorderly rooms, the washing of bedaubed little hands, and the kissing of, oh, such dirty little mouths. It means that we have to shut our Æschylus and shelve our Faust and our Homer for a few years at least, and many a father and mother look back with something like longing upon the old days when they lived with these great souls and when their cherished books were not smeared as to bindings and torn as to leaves.