Her complete withdrawal from the struggle for existence had at
last, in her negative, non-resistive mind atrophied all the
instincts of that struggle including finally the instinct for
reproduction.
The instinct for reproduction is intricately involved in the
struggle for existence. The individual struggles for
perpetuation, for perpetuation in person, for perpetuation in
posterity. Work, the perpetuation of one's own life in strain and
pain; work, the clinging to existence in spite of its blows;
work, the inuring of the individual to the penalties of
existence, is linked psychologically to the power and desire for
continued racial life. The individual, the class, which struggles
no more will in the end reproduce itself no more. In not having
had to conquer life, it has lost its will to live.
The detailed daily reasons for this ultimate social law stand
clear in Marie's life. And remember what sort of woman she was.
The woman who is coerced by external, authoritative ideals will
bear children even when the wish to bear them is really absent.
She will bear them without thinking. She will bear them because
she has never thought that anything else was possible.
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