This is not a faith which has its source in a vague hope.

The problems of the individual life are linked on to the fate of the racial life, and again and again we shall find as we ponder the individual questions we are here concerned with, that at all points they ultimately converge towards this same racial end.
Since we have here, therefore, to follow out the sexual relationships of the individual as they bear on society, it will be convenient at this point to put aside the questions of ancestry and to accept the individual as, with hereditary constitution already determined, he lies in his mother's womb.
It is the mother who is the child's supreme parent.

At various points in zooelogical evolution it has seemed possible that the functions that we now know as those of maternity would be largely and even equally shared by the male parent.

Nature has tried various experiments in this direction, among the fishes, for instance, and even among birds.

But reasonable and excellent as these experiments were, and though they were sufficiently sound to secure their perpetuation unto this day, it remains true that it was not along these lines that Man was destined to emerge.