Page:Philosophical Review Volume 26.djvu/57

No. 1.] demand for individual liberty and self-direction in the most important of human relations. What makes the sex relation ethical? Is a marriage, ecclesiastical or legal, necessary to make ethical the function of motherhood, or conversely is parenthood and its responsibilities the supreme sanction for sex relations? If there is to be a single standard for the sexes shall it be the woman's standard or the man's? Is permanence relatively unimportant as a justification of the sex relation and should some other conception such as integrity take its place? Is there a right to motherhood, and likewise a right to limit childbearing? These are fundamental questions scarcely heard as yet by the great masses but raised seriously by the few. The tide is now setting strongly toward increased liberty, yet for those who look back over many similar tides in human civilization and for those who believe firmly with Bishop Butler that morality is not an invention that must be bolstered by fictions or authority, there is ground for belief that the new forces will set their own limits and humanity move soberly on toward the standards of democracy and freedom in other lines which it has already achieved in larger degree in political life.