I answer, on natural grounds alone: You may counsel,
but you cannot compel, either by positive law or ethical precept, any
man or woman to seek to have children. You surely will not breed men
by selection, like cattle, as Plato proposed. The union of the sexes,
especially the married union, is an act to be of all others the most
entirely free, spontaneous, uncommanded, and unconstrained. It should
be a union of intense mutual love. But a man may not meet with any
woman that he can love with passion; or, meeting such, he may not be
able to win her. Nor, considering the indeterminateness of points of
health, capacity, and character, could any certain list be drawn up of
persons bound to have issue. Thus the utmost that can be argued is a
counsel in this direction, a counsel that mankind ordinarily are ready
enough to comply with. But if any one of seeming aptitude excuses
himself on the score of finding no partner to his liking, or of a
desire to travel, or of study, or still more, of devotion--and why
should not a man, ever of natural piety, go out into solitude, like
St. Antony, to hold communion with his Maker?--all these excuses must
be taken.
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