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.