The ideal condition for a child that is to be well-constituted and flourishing in body and mind, is, in the first place, that its mother should be left in peace during gestation, and certainly that she should be left scrupulously alone during the period of suckling. From the standpoint of the race it is of such supreme importance that a child should be reared on mother’s milk, that everything should be done, no stone should be left unturned, to secure if possible the certainty of this condition. With regard to cohabitation during gestation it is only fair to say that opinions are sadly divided, some doctors maintaining one thing, and others the reverse. If we require a standard, however, we have only to study the lower animals, among which the female is not even accessible during pregnancy. Whereas some doctors will declare, however, that any cohabitation whatsoever during gestation is most pernicious, all are unanimous in pronouncing against _normal_ indulgence at such times. But apart from everything that changeable and uncertain science may periodically proclaim regarding this question, it would seem obvious that cohabitation at a time when fertilization is impossible cannot in any case have been Nature’s design; and if, therefore, there remain the smallest doubt about the matter—as the division of opinion among medical men reveals—surely the benefit of the doubt ought, in all humanity, to be given to the expected offspring! With regard to cohabitation after the confinement and during the seven to nine months of suckling that should follow, there can, however, be no doubt whatsoever. This _must_ be bad; for, seeing that it is of primary importance that the child during these months should be able to obtain mother’s milk, no risks should be run which can in any way jeopardize the happy fulfilment of this condition. At such times the mother should be left severely alone. She is happy, exquisitely happy.[65] Her nervous system is concentrated on the one important and essential object—that of providing for her infant child. Any action or diversion that tends to disturb the attention of the nervous system, or to shake this precious concentration upon the mammæ, cannot therefore be too strongly deprecated. What is the alternative? The mammæ find the nervous energy of the body divided. The woman’s system is no longer that of a mother alone; it has been recalled to its rôle as a wife. There may be conception or there may not—at any rate, the frequent occurrence of children only a year or thirteen months older than a brother or sister, shows how often conception does take place in such circumstances—and the consequence is that the suckling has to be removed from the breast, in order to become the experimental victim of every kind of abomination in the form of substitutes for mother’s milk.