particularly selected by God, and that a certain race is his chosen people. But that is not true. The Jews are no more God's chosen people than the jay is his chosen bird, or the mosquito his chosen insect.

It is not true that Nature particularly works for us—facts prove the contrary.

Facts prove that we are nothing but an undesirable by-product, to make our way and to live our life as best we can within a cruelly turbulent space, imprisoned by invisible, impenetrable walls of limitation.

No, it is not true that our life is favored by Nature. After we build our homes, make our cities and add improvements, what happens? Nature, with her forceful winds, blows them down; her cruel storms and rising floods wash them away as so much refuse, and a tremor of the earth destroys not only our homes but ourselves also, leaving no traces of our efforts, treasures and sacred ties.

Even as individuals we "curse God" for the shortcomings with which we are afflicted. The exceedingly stout person, one who is "in his own way" curses God for making him so stout. The thin person has a similar grievance. Those who are too large and those who are too small are equally dissatisfied. The shape of an eye, the curve of the mouth, a blemish here, an impediment there, is the direct cause of poignant embarrassment. Organs or dimensions too unsightly and unsatisfactory are productive of continual worry and torment throughout our lives. The blind, the deaf, the dumb and the crippled have forever a curse for God upon their lips.

We inhabit the air, with a density of fifteen pounds to the square inch, a mixture of dirt and water, in the same manner that the fish inhabits the water and the worm the earth. Were we beings of a superior type, Nature would have made us so versatile that we should be able to accustom ourselves to any condition, and survive in any climate. But despite all our improvements, despite all man's efforts to avoid and escape the conditions of Nature, many of us freeze to death in winter and become prostrate from the heat of summer. If it were true that the earth were purposely made and existing for us there would be "no flowers born to blush unseen and waste their sweetness on the desert air."

We, ourselves, scientists tell us, are the result of a long series of evolutionary development. They tell us that Nature started with a single cell of protoplasm, a single cell of living organism, and produced the present human species after the life and death of an illimitable number of forms through the stages of countless ages, not exempting those lives from the fear, torture and misery that are still so essential a part of the scheme of life. Why impose so cruel and wasteful a condition upon those numberless billions that have lived before us, since nothing but eternal death was gained by their existence?

Surely, Nature is a poor architect and builder, after taking so much material and so much time, to make such an incomplete place for such an outlandish form to rule and occupy. If we were given the same opportunity (that is, you and I), with all the power and resources of Nature, to build a habitable place, and mold a living something to inhabit it, our results would be ten thousand times better than that which circles the scope and boundary of our lives, with the incomprehensible physical form with which we breathe and manifest life.

Truthfully, and without the slightest element of egotism, I should be ashamed of my efforts were I to present as my handiwork nothing better than the level and plane which Nature has attained.

II

We come into this world a tiny bundle and mass of helpless, feeble flesh, utterly unprepared to meet the requirements and fearful conditions that lie in wait for us. We are in need of immediate, urgent and constant help from those who were responsible for our birth, imperatively so from our mother.

The child does not ask to come, and knows absolutely nothing about its welfare. And the mother often does not want to bear it, as she knows absolutely nothing about maternal cares. And yet that mother must go through the "shadow of the valley of death" before she can deliver this tiny bundle and helpless mass of feeble flesh. And how often, aye, only too often, does the mother enter the valley of death when making delivery of this living form, never to see the face of the child that Nature imposed upon her to bear!

What a despicable arrangement!

What an unfair bargain!

Can you imagine a more outlandish, ridiculous, awkward, complicated, cruel and fearful system of reproduction than that which we are under yoke to pursue? Without the elaborate details of the perilous stages of life's development, this is the method of incubation Nature imposes upon us. Before the birth of a human being, one male and one female—that is, one man and one woman—must have sexual intercourse. Whether this intercourse is prompted by all the finer impulses of life or is accomplished by the savageness of rape makes no difference to Nature's purpose. To Nature the end justifies the means, and she continues to go about her business.

The male—that is, the man of this pair—can strut and parade with the utmost freedom from his responsibility for the result of his act that Nature has made to be pre-eminent among his desires. But the female—that is, the woman of this pair—must for nine months (just think of it!) carry and develop the germ of this child in the fertile field of her womb, and be subjected to the innumerable terrifying dangers accompanying such a carriage, and then suffer a superhuman torture to make the delivery, through a very meager channel of her body, of this living plant which she has never seen, does not know and quite often does not want, but must absolutely bear!

Provided Nature has not made the creature too deformed and mutilated and unable to survive, the mother must, during a period of constant care and outward carriage, bear this feeble infant for another period of nine months or more!—suckling at her breast for food!

So you see that woman is not only a human being, but a fertile ground and pasture.

I have not gone into the misery of child bearing and caring, nor of the ingratitude that is so often received. I ask for what reason has Nature imposed this terrible penalty upon woman? Why?

Would you, reader, were it in your power, formulate such a method of reproduction?

I'll answer for you:

No!

But that is not all. For years to come, this child that for nine months was carried inwardly and for a much longer period outwardly, by its mother, must now be fed, washed and clothed for an indefinite number of years, and guided through a thousand perils and dangers that Nature has set before it, with disease as Nature's agent, crouching and ready to destroy the child's life, not in open combat, but invisibly concealed by the limitation of our senses. This is one of Nature's unspeakable crimes; one of God's despicable impositions.

It is not sufficient that a mother should subject herself to such a dangerous and perilous mission, but she must also withstand the cruel savageness, the cold, callous death piercings, of Nature's invisible tyrants and destroyers. Life holds but one real attraction, one instance that can be classified above all others. Without this attraction it would be