The present book does not belong to the vast number of all kinds of
books, from the philosophical and the scientific to the artistic
and practical, which, with other words, in other permutations and
combinations, say and repeat the old familiar, sickeningly familiar,
commonplaces. This book is one of those rare books which do not
treat of what everybody talks about and nobody needs, but of what
nobody talks about and what is important and necessary for all. It
is important for the parents to know how they should act, in order
without unnecessary suffering to bring forth uncorrupted and healthy
children, and still more important it is for the future children to
be born under the best of conditions, as, indeed, it says in one
of the mottoes of the book, "To be well-born is the right of every
child."
The book is not one of those which are read only that no one may
say that he has not read this book, but one of those the reading of
which leaves traces, compelling men to change their lives, to mend
what is irregular in them, or at least to think of doing so. This
book is called _Tokology_, the science of the bearing of children.
There are all kinds of strange sciences, but there is no such
science, and yet, after the science of how to live and die, this is
the most important science. This book has had enormous success in
America, and has greatly influenced American mothers and fathers.
In Russia it ought to have an even greater influence. The questions
about abstaining from tobacco and all kinds of exciting beverages,
beginning with alcohol and ending with tea, the questions about
eating without the slaughter of living beings, vegetarianism, the
questions about sexual continence in domestic life, and many others,
which partly have been solved and partly are being worked out, and
possess a vast literature in Europe and in America, have not yet
been touched upon by us, and so Mrs. Stockham's book is particularly
important for us: it at once transfers the reader into a new world
of a living human movement.
In this book every thinking woman--for this book is chiefly
intended for women--will find first of all an indication that there
is absolutely no need of continuing to live as insipidly as her
forefathers lived, but that it is possible to find better paths of
life, using for this purpose science, the experience of men, and her
own free thought, and, as the first model of such a use she will
find in this book many precious counsels and hints, which will make
life easier for herself, her husband, and her children.
_February 2, 1890._