because it has increased the culture of woman and her feeling of personal responsibility, the woman movement has had its influence, both directly and indirectly, upon the postponement of the legal and customary marriage age. since young girls have exercised their brains as much as the boys have, they are no longer so far in advance of the boys in physical development. but when modern girls finish their studies they are physically as well as psychically more universally developed than their grandmothers were. they know much more of the difficulties and realities of life, not least of the sexual life. and this knowledge has instilled in them a reluctance to undertake too early the serious and difficult task of motherhood. they have greater need of truth and culture, and less tendency to erotic visionary dreaming than girls of their age in the middle of the previous century; their desire for work and their social feeling fix goals, and they work with all their might to attain them. and 170because, as already explained, both sexes have for each other a more many-sided attraction than the merely erotic, young people are more careful, more choice, in their erotic decisions. the finest young girls of to-day are penetrated by the nietzschean idea, that marriage is the combined will of two people to create a new being greater than themselves. but their joy does not consist in the fact “that the man wills”; they are themselves “will,” and above all they have the will to choose the right father for their children, not only for their own sake but for the sake of the children.

if it be true that immediate, “blind,” erotic attraction is most instinctively correct in choice, then the present comrade life of young people and the increased clear-sightedness which it gives, as well as the increasing erotic idealism of young girls, are not unconditionally advantageous to the new race. the question is, however, still undecided. here it may only be emphasised that the young girl of to-day, in spite of all intellectual development, is still won always by powerful spiritual-sensual love, which the woman movement has too long considered as a negligible quantity. under the influence of the doctrine of evolution, young girls begin to understand that their value as members of society depends essentially upon their value for the propagation of mankind; all the more they realise the duty of physical culture which will enable them to fulfil this function better; they no longer consider their erotic longing as impure and 171ugly but as pure and beautiful. it is out of this soul condition that the different movements for the protection of mothers and children, theoretically considered, have proceeded. these are at present the most important “woman movements,” although unrecognised by the older woman movement. and this older movement has not yet recognised the fact that, because of present marriage conditions, the degenerate, uneducated, decrepit, have greater opportunity for propagating the race, both within and outside of marriage, than the young, sound, pure-minded, and loving; that it can therefore be no sin, from the point of view of the race, if the latter become parents without marriage, nor should it be a subject of shame from the social point of view. all women’s rights have little value, until this one thing is attained: that a woman who through her illegitimate motherhood has lost nothing of her personal worth, but on the contrary has proved it, does not forfeit social esteem.

our time can point to women who have been typical of the reform tendencies of the century in this respect. some of these women, if they really accomplished the unprecedented task of “a child and a work,” have drawn their strength for the task out of precisely the commonplace, homely qualities and sterling virtues, contrary to which they believed they were acting when they became mothers, driven by a power greater than their conscious personality. others again 172became mothers with the consent of their whole personality. they were clear that they thus made use of the masculine rights and freedom which feminism first brought home to women. and although many advocates of women’s rights refrain from such consequences of their ideas, the women who in other respects determine their conduct of life by their own free personal choice recognise that this, their real “emancipation,” is a fruit of the woman movement.

in europe, however, most women under thirty still dare to dream of motherhood in a love marriage as the greatest happiness and the highest duty of life.[5]

but, as direct and indirect result of the woman movement, the fact none the less remains that there is found among women an increasing disinclination 173for maternity, a reluctance which deprives mankind of many superior mothers, while at the same time woman’s commercial work for self-support in all classes increases her sterility or makes her incapable of the suckling so vitally important for the children.

that the modern woman, because of individual fate or her own choice, often remains unmarried is no danger in and for itself. this fact, as i have emphasised above, is connected with a number of cultural and material conditions, which sometime will be altered, and then woman’s desire for marriage will again increase. the real danger has appeared only since women have begun to strengthen the tendency to celibacy by the amaternal theory, which now confuses the feminine brain and leads the feminine instinct astray.

the woman movement in and with this influence upon maternity sinks to the lowest point of the scale according to the criterion of worth employed here: the elevation of the life of the individual and of the race. in this we stand in our time before a twofold mystery, which lies in the circumstance that not only women—women “with breasts made right to suckle babes”—emphasise this stultifying influence, but that there are men, each the son of a mother, who also propagate it. these men have allowed themselves to be blinded by the false logic concerning women, which declares that since rich mothers do not wish to fulfil the duties of a mother and the poor cannot fulfil them, superior 174social organisations must be created for that purpose; in other words, instigated by a mere temporary unpleasant discrepancy, we will create a new, a different order of things. but, if this obtained universally, it would inflict incomparably greater injury upon mankind than do present unhappy conditions.

upon the whole, however, it is precisely as a result of this tendency that the deepest hostility of men against feminism has developed. the fact that the idea of evolution is now beginning to enter into the flesh and blood of man also contributes its share to this feeling. just as formerly a man wished heirs for his personal and real estate and for his name, he now desires inheritors of his being; he desires an eternal life, which becomes a certainty only by means of parenthood, whereby the individual as father or mother lives on physically and spiritually, in body and soul, in his children and grandchildren down to the last of his descendants. this conception has made the sex instinct again holy, as it was for the pagans. this new reverence for their duty as beings of sex now induces many young men to guard their sexual health and strength by an asceticism the motive of which is the exact opposite of that which determined the asceticism called forth by christianity, the asceticism which was fear of the sex instinct as impure and as a temptation to sin. now the innermost aim of young men’s creative desire is the higher development of mankind. love becomes 175for them the condition by which they can most perfectly redeem their religious certainty of being part of a great design, their religious longing for harmony with life’s creative desire, with the infinite.

there are now men who work most zealously for the ennoblement of the race—“eugenics,” as this effort is called in england—as well as for the protection of mother and child—“puericulture,” as this endeavour is called in france. there are men who write excellent works upon the psychology of the child, and upon sexual instruction; men, who, in art and poetry, give expression to the new veneration for the sanctity of generation, for motherhood, for the child. the finest thing written about the child as a cultural power is written by an american.[6] painting has now new devotional pictures of the mother with her child, especially those conceived by a frenchman and an italian.[7] the most beautiful representation of youth’s new desire for love is by a german sculptor.[8] likewise a german, nietzsche, has the most profound conception of parenthood and education as the means whereby humanity will cross over the bridge of the men of to-day to the superman.

only when all this is realised can one conceive what the feelings of these new men must be when they meet those new women “who are no longer 176willing to be slaves of the instinct for the propagation of the race;” who see in motherhood “a loss of time from their work;” “an attack upon their beauty;” an obstacle to the refined conduct of life;—a conduct of life certain to debase woman’s worth as a child-bearing being, but to elevate her to that exquisite, perfect product of culture, a “woman of the world;” an obstacle also for woman as creator of other objective cultural values. if a man with a father’s desires finds himself united with such a woman, he finds himself in marriage quite as much a prostitute as innumerable wives have felt themselves to be when they were mere tools of a man’s desire. on the contrary the desire for the elevation of mankind on the part of the new woman and the new man, is evinced in the idea that not the quantity but the quality of the children they give to humanity is most significant; that a land of fewer but more perfect men is a higher culture ideal than the principle still always maintained from the point of view of national competition, that the inhabitants of a country must only be numerous however inferior they may be.

to this wholly new evolutionary conception of life the amaternal women oppose the following train of thought which greatly influences the feeling and desire of women to-day[9]:

177culture now sets new duties for woman, more significant than exclusively natural ones. the more the individual life increases in value, the more the interest for the mere functions of sex declines, and with it also the value of woman as woman for a society where, because of motherhood, she has become a being of secondary rank. it evinces lack of ideality if one censures this tendency of the modern woman to renounce maternity for the sake of more spiritual interests. while the mother concentrates herself upon her own child only, the woman who renounces motherhood can extend her being to embrace children as children in general. as a mother, woman is only a being of nature. but the personality, with its multiplicity of feelings and endeavours, demands an independent activity as well as maternity.

to put her entire personality into the education of her children is a twofold error. first and foremost, most mothers are bad educators and serve their children better if they entrust them to a born teacher; in the second place, gifted children educate 178themselves best and should be spared all educational arts. the mediocre child, who is more susceptible to education, has ordinarily also only mediocre parents, who likewise benefit the children most if they put them in the care of excellent teachers. children who are below mediocrity can also be best educated by specialists. so there remains for the mother, after the first years’ care and training, no especial task as educator, at least none in which she can really put her personality. to talk to a mother about the possibilities of a richer office of mother, as educator of her children, she calls lulling her into an illusion under which she must labour only to suffer. a woman who can exercise her personality in another way should not therefore put it into the education of her children.

the amaternal advocates deny that motherliness is the criterion of womanliness; they find this criterion in the form, the external being of woman, in her manner and physical appearance—in a word, in the outer expression of the inner disposition, which they deny as typical of womanliness! “womanliness” is thus reduced to an “?sthetic principle,” while woman’s spiritual attributes are considered as “universally human”; and the right is granted to the feminine sex to emancipate herself from the result of the heresy that motherliness should be the ethical norm for the “being” or “essence” of womanhood. the suitability of woman’s psychic constitution for her work as 179mother is not acknowledged as proof that motherliness is the distinguishing characteristic of womanliness. for this constitution is less conspicuous in the higher stages of differentiation. its suitability was then a phenomenon of adaptation and changed with the conditions of life. thus this constitution cannot be cited as a reason for limiting woman’s personal exercise of her powers. motherliness is no social instinct. how can motherliness, which we have in common with beasts and savages, be considered as higher than, for example, justice, truth, and other gradually won spiritual values, which woman can promote by her personal activity? the higher the forms of life woman attains, the less will her personality be determined by motherliness. why then should women bring to the domestic life the sacrifice of their personality, while no one demands this of men? why shall not woman, just as man, satisfy her demands as a sex being in marriage and, as for the rest, follow her profession, attend to her spiritual development, her social tasks? why condemn woman to remain a half-being—that is, with unexercised brain—only because certain of her instincts attract her to man, while he is not constrained to suppress his personality because he in like manner felt himself attracted to woman? it is the old superstition of the family life as “woman’s sphere,” which still confuses the conception. by the present form of family life woman is “oversexed.” her higher development, 180as well as that of her husband and children, will be promoted if woman guards her independence by earning her own living, in commercial work conducted beyond the portal of the home; if housekeeping becomes co-operative; if the education of the children is carried on outside the home, in which now the motherly tenderness emasculates the children and fosters in them family sentiment of an egoistic nature and not social feelings. thus are solved the difficulties which are entailed when the wife’s work is carried on outside the home; equipoise between her intellectual and emotional, her sexual and social nature follows, and her worth, as that of a man, will be measured by her human personality, not by her womanliness, her efficacy in the family, for the exercise of which she is now constrained to renounce her personality.

so runs in brief the programme of the amaternals.

it has already been indicated that the woman movement, in its inception, could gather strength only by combating with all its power the prejudice that woman is incapable of the same kind of activity as man. but now the whole woman movement has for a long time been emphasising the fact that woman is entitled, not only on her own behalf but more especially in her capacity as home-keeper, wife, and mother, to the full development of her powers and to equality with man in the family and in society. in the amaternal programme sketched above, however, the fanaticism, which characterised 181the entire woman movement a generation ago, now evinces itself in the error that equal rights for the sexes must mean also equal functions; that the development of women’s powers involves also their application in the same spheres of activity in which man is engaged; that equality of the sexes implies sameness of the sexes. while moderate feminism begins to see that, if man and wife compete, this rivalry can benefit[10] neither the woman, the man, nor the children, amaternal feminism urges the keenest competition. and if this is once accepted as advantageous to woman’s personality and to society, then it is obvious that she must, with all the energy of the attacked, defend herself from the duties of maternity, because of which she would obviously come off second-best in the competition.

from the point of view of individualism it is obvious that the law must set no limitations to woman’s practice of a vocation, unless evident hygienic dangers menace either her or the coming generation. women must, for their own sake as well as for that of society, have free choice of work, for life and nature possess innumerable unforeseen possibilities. nevertheless, it does happen that a woman who gives superior children to humanity may, nevertheless, feel herself incapable of educating 182them; likewise it sometimes happens that a husband and wife who have exceptional children, cannot endure to live together. in neither case has law or custom a right to force upon a mother or a father a yoke that is intolerable or to demand of a mother or a father unreasonable sacrifices.

but the right to limit the choice of work, the law does not possess; nature assumes that right herself: first of all from the axiom that no one can be in two places at the same time, and in the second place because no one can respond simultaneously and with full energy to two different spiritual activities. one cannot, for example, count even to one hundred and at a certain number give a simple grasp of the hand without suspending the counting momentarily. although no one has ever been denied the privilege of solving a mathematical problem and of following carefully at the same time a piece of music, yet it is certain that the effectiveness of both intellectual activities would be thereby diminished. these extremely simple observations can be continued until the most complex are reached. if the observation be directed to the sphere of domestic life, every wife and mother who is willing to institute impartial observations of self, will affirm the difficulty of working with a divided mind.

if a mother carries on her work at home and must put it away in order to be beside the sick-bed of her child, or to make those arrangements which assure domestic comfort, or to help her husband, 183then she feels that her book or her picture suffers, that the activity which binds her more intimately to the home relaxes for a time the intimacy of her connection with her work. one can by day carry on a dull industrial task, and by night produce an achievement of the soul; but one cannot let one’s soul radiate in one direction without impairing its energy in another. a work needs exclusive devotion. and this is, viewed externally, difficult to attain in joint action; viewed from within, it requires a renunciation that in the case of a loving soul evokes a continual inner struggle. for that reason, also, literature with woman as its subject has for some decades been filled with the great conflict of modern woman’s life: the conflict between vocation and parents, between vocation and husband, between vocation and child. certainly the family has often been a torture chamber for individuality, as a consequence of laws and customs, which the future will regard as we now do the rack and the thumbscrew. but nature is more severe than law and custom when she confronts us with a choice which, however it may turn out, tears a piece from our heart.

and now neither custom nor man demands of woman the “sacrifice of the personality.” this sacrifice is required only by the law of limitations which rules over us all.

the creative man or the man working objectively must often condemn the emotional side of his personality to a partial development; he must for the 184sake of his work renounce many family values important for this emotional side of his being. even if shorter working hours could partially diminish this cultural offering, the inner conflict, for the man or the woman, is not settled thereby.

even if a man, in the consciousness of his wife’s endowment of talent, assumed a number of domestic duties, especially those pertaining to the children, the inner conflict would still continue. and this conflict is in no way solved by the amaternal theory that the personal life must be placed above the instinct life. for, as has been emphasised, the choice is not between the personal and the instinct life, but between the intellectual and the emotional side of woman’s personality. and the solution of this choice has not been discovered by the amaternals, who would combine commercial work with marriage and maternity. women who remain unmarried or who give up commercial activity which they cannot carry on in the home, have not settled the conflict either, but have only reduced its difficulties.

the fundamental error of the amaternal solution of the problem is that it characterises motherliness as a non-social instinct, but, on the other hand, defines the “personal” activity of woman as an expression of the social instinct. for all social instincts have been developed by culture out of primitive instincts. all cultural development lies between the sex impulse of the australian negress and the erotic sentiment of elizabeth barrett 185browning’s sonnets. and when the amaternals assert that motherliness, which “we have in common with beasts and savages,” cannot be an expression of the personality, their argument has the same validity as that which would deny to the sistine chapel the quality of an expression of personality because beasts and savages also exhibit the decorative instinct.

the development of the mother instinct into motherliness is one of the greatest achievements in the progress of culture, a development by which the maternal functions have continually become more complex and differentiated. already in the case of the higher animals maternity involves much more than the mere act of giving birth; an animal not only faces death for her young, she gives them also a training which often indicates power of judgment. a cat, for instance, which sought in vain to prevent her kitten from entering the water and which finally threw the kitten in and then pulled it out, thus obtaining the desired result of her pedagogy, had not, as have so many modern mothers, read spencer, but could, nevertheless, put many of these mothers to shame. even the initial maternal functions, nursing and physical care, involve a culture of the spiritual life of the mother, not only through an increase in tenderness, but also in observation, discrimination, judgment, self-control; a woman’s character often develops more in a month during which she is occupied with the care of children, than in years of professional 186work. mother love and the reciprocal love which it awakens in the child, not only exercise the first deep influence upon the individual’s life of feeling, but this love is the first form of the law of mutual help—it is the root of altruism, the cotyledon of a now widely ramified tree of “social instincts.”

although woman through the mere physical functions of motherhood makes a great social contribution, the importance of her contribution is greatly enhanced if one also takes into consideration her spiritual nature. and notwithstanding the fact that fatherhood has also, to a certain degree, developed in man the qualities of tenderness, watchfulness, patience, yet the enormous predominance of woman’s physical share in parenthood, in comparison with man’s, is in itself enough to create, in course of time, the intimate connection which still exists to-day between mother and child, as well as the difference between the personality of woman and man. the physical functions of motherhood were the fundamental reasons for the earliest division of labour. and this division of labour, the aim of which, next to self-preservation, was for both sexes the protection of posterity, augmented and strengthened the qualities which each sex employed for its special functions. all human qualities lie latent in each. but they have been so specialised by this division of labour, or, on the other hand, suppressed by it, that they now appear in varying proportions: in woman, a careful, managing, supervising, lifeguarding, 187inward-directed sense of love; in man, courage, desire for action, force of will, power of thought, an activity subduing nature and life, became the distinguishing characteristics; and fatherhood became psychologically, as it is physiologically, something different from motherhood. even if culture continues to efface the sharp lines of demarcation, so that it becomes more and more impossible to generalise about “woman” and “man,” and increasingly more necessary for each and every woman to solve the “woman question” individually, yet from the point of view of the race, the division of labour must on the whole remain the same as that which hitherto existed, if the higher development of mankind shall continue in uninterrupted advance to more perfect forms. it is necessary for these higher ends of culture that woman in an ever more perfect manner shall fulfil what has hitherto been her most exalted task: the bearing and rearing of the new generation.

the amaternal assertion, that motherliness can be no higher than justice and truth, is an infuriating antithesis. it is as if one should assert that “air is better than water, or both better than bread.” both assertions place the fundamental condition of life counter to other needs of life! who shall exercise justice and truth when no new men are born? and, moreover, how shall justice and truth increase in mankind if children are not trained to a greater reverence for justice and a deeper love of truth? in order to fulfil this one office of 188education well, mothers need their universal human culture in its entirety. but even if this were not so, if motherhood did not require the concentration of woman’s personality; even if motherliness remained only “primitive instinct,” yet this instinct, in the women who have guarded it, is more valuable for mankind than the universal human development of power of the women who have lost this instinct. no social nor individual activity of women could compensate for the extinction of this “instinct,” which only recently in messina drove hundreds of mothers to shield their children with their own bodies; this “instinct,” which recently impelled a mother, who learned before she gave birth to her child that her own life must be the price for the saving of that of the child, to cry: “i have lived, but the life of my child belongs now to mankind—save the child!” so the mother died without even having seen the beautiful being for whom she gave her life. in the world of “personally” developed women, however, after a new messina catastrophe the mothers would be found with their manuscripts and their pictures in their arms. and confronted with a choice like that related above, the mother would answer: “let the child die, i will live my personal life to the end.”

the amaternal type must persist for the present. there are in reality in our time many women who with unresponsive eyes can pass by a lovely child, among them even mothers who do not feel the 189pure sensuousness, the wise madness, the intoxicating delight which such a child awakens in every motherly woman; mothers who have no conception what a fascinating subject for study the soul of a child can offer. jean paul, who scourged worthless mothers and tried to awaken the repressed maternal instinct of his time with the charge that a woman who is bored when she has children, is a contemptible creature, would find to-day many mothers who are bored only if they have their children about them.

and these cerebral, amaternal women must obviously be accorded the freedom of finding the domestic life, with its limited but intensive exercise of power meagre, beside the feeling of power which they enjoy as public personalities, as consummate women of the world, as talented professionals. but they have not the right to falsify life values in their own favour so that they themselves shall represent the highest form of life, the “human personality” in comparison with which the “instinctively feminine” signifies a lower stage of development, a poorer type of life.

women who have produced books and works of art, to be compared, as respects permanence of value, to confetti at a carnival, have, according to this viewpoint, proved themselves human individualities, while a mother who has contributed an endless amount of clear thought, rich understanding, warm feeling, and strong will to the education of a fine group of children, requires 190a public office in order to prove herself a “human personality”! the brain work which a woman employs in a commercial concern bears witness to her individuality, but the brain work which a large, well-managed household demands, does not. the woman physician who delivers a mother expresses her “personality,” but the mother has put no “personality” into the feelings with which she has borne the child, the dreams with which she has consecrated it, the ideas in accordance with which she has educated it! the girl who has passed her examinations has proved herself a developed human being; but her grandmother, who is now filled with the kindness and wisdom which she has won in a life dedicated to domestic duties, a life in which the restricted sphere of her duties did not prevent the comprehensiveness of her cultural interests, nor her all-embracing sympathy with humanity—such a woman is not a personality!

when men advance as an argument against women’s rights the fear that women will lose their womanliness in public life, the older feminists answer that womanliness, especially motherliness, is rooted too firmly in nature to make it possible for this danger to exist. nothing has, however, become more clear in this amaternalistic time than that motherliness is not an indestructible instinct. just as our time produces in increasing numbers sterile women and women incapable of nursing their children, so it produces more and more 191psychically amaternal women. we can pass in silence the cases of children martyred in families or in children’s homes, for sexual perversity and religious fanaticism often play a r?le in such connections; we can also pass by the millions of mothers who bring about the abortion of their offspring, for the poor are driven to such practices largely by necessity, the rich mostly by love of pleasure. there still remain a sufficient number of women in whom the mother instinct has faded away because of a course of thought like that just described. our time furnishes manifold proofs of the fact that the mother instinct can easily be weakened, or even entirely disappear, although the erotic impulse continues to live; that motherliness is not a spontaneous natural instinct, but the product of thousands of years not merely of child-bearing, but also of child-rearing; and that it must be strengthened in each new generation by the personal care which mothers bestow upon their children. a woman learns to love the strange child whom she nurses as if it were her own; a father who can devote himself to the care of his little children is possessed by an almost “motherly tenderness” for them, as are also older brothers and sisters for the little ones whom they care for. but while those who advocate the cause of the amaternal women draw from such facts the conclusion that motherliness cannot be used as a criterion of womanliness, yet an entirely different conclusion forces itself upon everyone who sees 192in the united uplift of the individual and of mankind the criterion of the life-enhancing effect of the woman movement, the conclusion that the amaternal soul not only confirms the worst apprehensions of men in regard to the results of the woman movement, but also constitutes the greatest danger to the woman movement itself. for the amaternal ideas will evoke a violent reaction on the part of men, in case such a reaction does not appear at an early stage on the part of women.

this latter reaction might also include a rebellion against the methods of industrial production, which exhaust the strength of mothers and children. for the objection of industrialism, that “it cannot exist without women,” falls to the ground in face of the fact that a race cannot exist without sound and moral mothers. and “moral” means, here, mothers capable and willing to bear sound children and to train children along moral lines. if, on the contrary, europe and america adhere to the economic and ethical principles which prevent a number of able and willing women of this type from becoming mothers, and if numbers of other women who could be mothers continue unwilling to assume the burden of motherhood, then this problem will finally become the problem of a future for the european-american people.

the woman movement must now with resolute determination abandon the narrow, biased attitude, psychologically natural a generation ago when the zealots of feminism had no other standard of 193value for an idea, an investigation, or a book, than whether they advanced or did not advance the cause of woman; whether they proved or did not prove woman’s equality with man. for woman’s work, studies, and other accomplishments, no other standard was applied than that of equality with man’s work, man’s studies, and the accomplishments of man. in a word, the proposition was that woman should be enabled to perform at the same time the life-work of a woman and of a man!

it is through these hybrids that the feminine sex transgresses against the masculine. and this is one reason why our time is so filled with the tragic vicissitudes of women. truly, every progressive person must agree with goethe’s aphorism, “i love him whom the impossible lures.” for, thus allured, man has elevated his particular generation above the generation preceding. but in action every one must go down who is not imbued with the consciousness that whoever exceeds his limits is liable to tragic consequences, in the modern psychological view of the guilt attaching to one who undertakes more than his strength will allow.

but our time exhibits also other less convulsively strained conditions of the feminine soul and therefore also brighter fates for woman. it shows not infrequently wives united with their husbands, not only by the sympathy which the human personality of each inspires, but also by the erotic 194attraction which the sex character of each exercises. and they have both won thereby that unity through which all the best and highest powers of their being are liberated and elevated as by religion. and their parenthood will then be the highest expression of this religion.

only religious natures are—in the deepest meaning of the word—loving or faithful or creative. it is the same soul which in one person reveals itself in ecstasy of belief, in a second in ardour of creation, in a third in a great erotic passion, in the fourth as parental love, in others again as love of country, as enthusiasm for freedom, desire for reform. at times one and the same soul, a woman’s or a man’s, is kindled by all these passions. but never has the same soul been able at the same time to feed all these passions in their highest potency. whether it be god, a work, or a human being that the soul embraces with its entire devotion, the religious character of this devotion always evinces itself in increasing longing, an endless susceptibility, a more persistent search after means of expression, a continual service, an inexhaustible patience in waiting for reciprocal activity from the object of love. the religious strength of a feeling consists in this, that the soul in every work, every sorrow, every joy,—in a word, in every spiritual condition, every experience,—is, consciously as well as unconsciously, more closely united with god, with the work, with the beloved, until every finest fibre of one’s being reaches down 195to the profound depths which the object of love represents for the lover.

in this necessary condition of concentration of the spiritual life is found the truth of woman’s complaint that the man, absorbed by his work, “no longer loves her”; the truth of the experience that earthly love indisputably detracts from the love of god; the truth of the frequent experience of husband and wife that with children the wealth of their spiritual life together is in certain respects inevitably diminished; the truth of man’s fear that woman’s absorption in a life-work personally dear to her must to a certain degree detract from her devotion to the home; the truth of the experience that the office of mother often interferes with the development of woman’s intellectual power.

only persons who distinguish themselves by what heine called “exuberance of mental poverty,” or what i might call analogously an “abyss of superficiality,” have not experienced the severe and beautiful psychic truth of jesus’ glorification of simplicity. the quiet harkening to the voice of god or to the inspiration of work or to the delicate vibrations of another soul, which daily, hourly, momentarily, are the conditions that enable the soul to live wholly in its belief, its work, its love, so that these feelings may grow stronger and the soul grow greater through these feelings—all this has “simplicity” as a condition; in a word, symmetrical unity, longing for completeness, inner poise, the swift emotion. fidelity—to a belief, 196a work, a love—is no product of duty. it is a process of growth.

these are the conditions to which many modern women, womanly at heart but divided, restless, groping, attempting much, will not submit. they could even learn to reverence these conditions in the child for whom play is such sacred seriousness; but instead they transform the most sacred earnest into play.

other women, on the contrary, are beginning to understand these conditions of growth and to comprehend that it was exactly the protected position of woman in the home, which has made it possible for her family feeling to acquire that depth which is to be attained only by concentration. but if this is no longer possible, then woman will love those that belong to her with less religious warmth. nothing can better illustrate the difference still existing between man and woman in this respect, than the fact that most men would consider themselves unfortunate if their entire exercise of power were concentrated upon the family, while most women still feel themselves fortunate when they have been given the opportunity to exercise to the uttermost the tendency inherent in them. for most women love best personally and in propinquity, while the potency of love in man often seeks distant goals. woman is happy in the degree to which she can bestow her love upon a person closely connected with her; if she cannot do that, then she may be useful, resigned, content, but 197never happy.[11] the very fact that woman’s strongest primitive instinct coincided with her greatest cultural office has been an essential factor in the harmony of her being.

the modern developed mother feels with every breath a grateful joy in that she lives the most perfect life when she can contribute her developed human powers, her liberated human personality, to the establishment of a home and to the vocation of motherhood. these functions conceived and understood as social, in the embracing sense in which the word is now used, give the new mother a richer opportunity to exercise her entire personality than she could find in modern commercial work. in one such occupation she must suppress either the intellectual or the emotional side of her nature; in another, the life either of the imagination or of the will. in domestic duties, on the contrary, these powers of the soul can work in unison. this is undoubtedly the deepest reason why, taken as a whole, women have become more harmonious, and men stronger in any special crisis, women more soulful, men more gifted. on this account men offer their great sacrifice more readily for an idea, or for the accomplishment of a work; women, for persons closely connected 198with them. and yet this co-operation of woman’s spiritual powers was in earlier times partly repressed by man’s demand for passivity on the part of woman as a thinking and willing personality, but for her unceasing activity as promoter of his comfort and that of the entire home. the mother of to-day can, on the contrary, exercise, as distributer, her culture, her thought, her supervision, her judgment, and her criticism, in order to make fully effective the faculty of her sex for foresight and organisation. she applies a great amount of spiritual energy to the selection of the essentials and the subordination of secondary things, to the creation of such facilities in the material work that time and means are left for the spiritual values, which, alas, are still neglected in the domestic economy of small, private households, as well as in national housekeeping. and as mother, modern woman is offered the first fitting opportunity to assert herself as a thinking and willing personality.

the significance of the vocation of mother has been underrated in its significance even by moderate feminists. but these were right when they demonstrated that the “sanctity” of this office had become a mere phrase, so badly or amateurishly was this vocation fulfilled—an indictment in which nietzsche and feminism for one rare moment are on common ground. mothers needed the spur of this contempt; it was necessary that their feeling of responsibility, their universal 199human culture, their personal self-reliance, should be aroused by the woman movement. only so could the new generation acquire the new type of women who for the present seek to qualify themselves by self-culture for the office of mother, in the expectation that for all women an obligatory education for motherhood will be realised. so long as this vocation can be practised without any training, nothing can be known of the possibilities whereby ordinary mothers may become good educators—unless they place the mother love and the intuitive understanding of the nature of the child that it affords above even the best outside teachers. just as a glorious voice makes a country girl a “natural singer,” so nature has at all times made certain mothers—and not least the women of the people—natural educators of children.

the biography of nearly every great man shows the place the mother through her personality occupied in the life of her son, the atmosphere which she diffused about her in the home, her direct and indirect influence. but only the culture of their natural gifts with conscious purpose will make of mothers artists.

when nietzsche wrote: “there will come a time when we shall have no other thought than education,” and when he placed this education specifically in the hands of mothers, least of all did he mean those “arts of education,” from which amaternals believe they “guard” children by rejecting an 200“artistically creative” home training by the mother, as a violence to the peculiar characteristic of the child!

the new mother, as the doctrine of evolution and the true woman movement have created her, stands with deep veneration before the mystic depths she calls her child, a being in whom the whole life of mankind is garnered. the richer the nature of the child is, the more zealously she endeavours to preserve for him that simplicity which he needs, and at the same time to provide for him the material that will enable him to work for himself. she insures to the child the pleasures adapted to his age, pleasures which at no later time can be enjoyed so intensely. the effect upon him of his playfellows and books, of nature, art, music, conversation, of the entire home milieu which the child receives, above all the influence of the personality and interests of the father and mother—all these the mother who is an artist in education observes in order to learn the natural proclivity of the child and then directly to strengthen and encourage it. at the same time she endeavours to find out what restraints are necessary in order that the natural bent be not impeded in its growth by secondary qualities. but the new type of mother does not seek to eradicate; she recognises the likeness between wheat and tares. the christian education, which has thus far prevailed, has exercised a restraining oppression or has done violence to the “sinful nature,” which must be 201broken and bent; this education was dermatological, not psychological, in method.

the new mother is especially characterised by the fact that she has rejected this earlier method. she allows her child, within certain bounds, full freedom, and demands, beyond those bounds, unconditional obedience. she helps the child to find for himself ever nobler motives for repression. this she can do because from the very beginning she has taken care of him; year by year she has persevered in the effort to establish good habits; she has tried to enlist as aids, food, bath, bed, dress, air, and play in the effort to keep him strong, sound, sexually pure—conditions fundamental to the whole later conduct of life. such a methodical physical care can be performed by the mother herself, while, on the other hand, in the first years of childhood paid hands might, through carelessness, stupidity, cruelty, laxity, or over-indulgence, destroy the glorious possibilities. if the prevention of the possibilities of nature being warped or destroyed constituted all that a mother could give, this one task would, nevertheless, be more important than any social relief work.

what characterises the new mother is that she understands the enormous significance of the first years, when the indispensable “training” takes place, in which the future life of the child is determined by the methods employed—whether they be those of torture or of culture, irrational or rational. then the great problem must be solved 202of establishing willing obedience from within in place of the hitherto enforced obedience from without; of maintaining self-control, won by self, in place of self-control imposed from without; of evoking voluntary renunciation in place of enforcing renunciation. for the capacity for obedience, for self-control, for renunciation, is one of the qualities fundamental to the whole later conduct of life. the new mother knows this as well as the mother of former times. but she endeavours to create this capacity by slow and sure means. the same thing obtains in regard to physical and psychical courage, which in the early years can often be so demoralised by fright that it can never emerge again. the training which hitherto was customary—based on compelling and forbidding—had its effect only upon the surface and prevented the child from experiencing the results of his own choice.

it is this indirect education by results which is the new mother’s method. her unceasing vigilance and consistency are required in order that the child shall actually bear the results of his actions. what she needs for this is first and foremost, time, time, and again time. apparently good effects can be obtained much quicker by intervening, preventing, punishing, but thus are turned aside the real results. by this method the child is deprived of the inner growth, which only the fully experienced reality with its components of bitter and sweet can give; and this growth the 203new mother endeavours to advance. much more time still is necessary to play the psychological game of chess, which consists in the checkmating of black by white; in other words, the conquest of negative characteristics by positive, through the child’s own activity—a task in which the child at first must be guided, just as in the assimilation of the elements of every other accomplishment, but in which he can later perfect himself. modern investigation in the realm of the soul enables us to see the dangers which sometime will demand quite as new methods in spiritual hygiene as bacteriology has created in the hygiene of the body. but we still leave unexercised powers of the soul, still misunderstand spiritual laws which sometime will radically transform the means of education. at some future day the new mothers will institute legal protection for children to an extent incomprehensible to us and therefore provocative only of smiles. for example, legal prohibition of corporal punishment by parents as well as teachers; legal prohibition of child labour, of certain tenement conditions, certain “amusements,” certain improper uses of the press. for the present every individual educator must set these laws over himself; must sedulously create counter influences to cope with the destructive influences which great cities, especially, exert upon children.[12] the new 204mothers lead children out into nature and endeavour to satisfy their zeal for activity by appropriate tasks as well as to encourage by suitable means their love of invention and their impulse for play. in the country children provide much for themselves. but what both city and country children need is a mother familiar with nature, who can answer the questions which the child is by his own observations prompted to ask; and the number of such mothers is continually increasing. both city and country children need also a mother who can tell stories. just as the settlement gardens most clearly demonstrate how sundered the working people of the great cities are from nature, so the “story evenings,” which are now established for children, show how far children have been permitted to stray from the mother, who formerly gathered them about her for the hour of story, play, and song. what, finally, children need is the mother’s delicate revelation of the sexual “mystery,” which often early exercises the thoughts of the child and in which he should be initiated quietly and gradually by the mother.

all the educational influences here outlined emanate not only from the enlightened, exceptional mother; they are exercised by the average mother of to-day to better advantage than by the spiritually significant mother of fifty years ago. and they are quite as essential, in order that the highest possibility within the reach of each may 205be attained, in the education of the genius as in that of the ordinary child. such influences in like degree strengthen the innate bent of the genius and raise the average, from generation to generation, to a level where man can live according to higher standards than those of the present time. the new mothers understand that for the utilisation of all these opportunities that make their appearance in the first seven years of the child’s life, their motherly tenderness, gentleness, and patience do not suffice; that they need in addition all the intelligence, imagination, fine feeling, scientific methods of observation, ethical and ?sthetic culture and other spiritual acquisitions they possess, as direct and indirect fruits of the woman movement.

when student and comrade life begin to claim the children, when the influence of the mother—that is of the new mother who has respect for the peculiar characteristic, the human worth, and the right of the child to live his own life—becomes more indirect, she nevertheless bears in mind that it is of the utmost importance that the son and the daughter should find the mother, when they return to the parental roof; that they should be able to breathe there an atmosphere of peace and warmth; that they should find the attentive eye, the listening ear, the helpful hand; that the mother should have the repose, the fine feeling, the observation requisite for following, without interfering with, the conflicts of youth; that she should not 206demand confidences but be always at hand to receive them; that she should show vital sympathy for the plans of work, the disappointments, the joys, of the young people; that she should always have time for caresses, tears, smiles, comfort, and care; that she should divine their moods, and anticipate their desires. by all these means the mother perpetuates in the soul of the child, unknown to him and to herself, her own personality. the talent which she has not redeemed by a productive work of her own, perhaps often for that very reason, benefits mankind in a son or a daughter, in whose soul the mother has implanted the social ideas, the dreams, the rebellion, which later become in them social deeds or works of art. above all, in the restless, sensitive, life-deciding years when the boy is becoming a youth and the little girl a maiden, the mother needs quiet and leisure to be able to give the ineffably needy children “the hoarded, secret treasure of her heart,” as the beautiful saying of dürer runs.

when such a mother is found, and such mothers are already found, she is the most splendid fruit of the woman movement’s sowing upon the field of woman’s nature.

because the new mother created for herself an open space about her own personality, she understands her son or her daughter when they in their turn push her aside in order to create that same open space about themselves. for in every generation the young renounce the ideals and the aims 207of their parents. the knowledge of this does not prevent the new mother, any more than it did the mother of earlier times, from feeling the pain incident to being set aside. but the former looks forward to a day when the son and daughter will freely choose her as a friend, having discovered what a significant pleasure the mother’s personality can afford them.

as the bird’s nest is made of nothing but bits of straw and down, so the feeling of home is fashioned out of soft, simple things; out of little activities that are neither ponderable nor measurable as political or as economic factors. when segantini painted the two nuns looking wistfully into the bird’s nest, he gave expression to the deepest pain that many modern women experience, the pain resulting from the consciousness that their life, notwithstanding its freedom, is lonely, because it has denied them the privilege of making a home and as a consequence has failed to afford them the joy of creation, which nature intended they should have, and of continuity of life in children to whom they gave birth.

here we stand at a point where the woman movement parallels the other social revolutions, undeviatingly as the rails of a track, and leads to the same objective. modern men and women, and especially women, have forfeited an opportunity for happiness in the loss of the feeling of homogeneity and security. just as formerly the property-holding family felt a secure sense of proprietorship in 208the ancestral estate, so every member of the home group felt himself safe in the family. now the children cannot depend with certainty upon the parents, nor the parents upon the children; the wife upon the husband, nor the husband upon the wife. each in extremity relies only upon himself. the character of man is thus altered quite as much as trees are changed when they are left standing alone in the denuded forest of which they once formed a part. if they can withstand the storms, they have produced more “character” than they had when they stood close together, under a mutual protection that nevertheless enforced uniformity.

from their earliest youth innumerable women must now care for themselves, as well as decide for themselves. thus the feeling of independence of modern woman has increased through the sacrifice of her peace; her individual characteristics, at the expense of her harmony. her feeling of loneliness is mitigated to a certain degree by the growing feeling of community with the whole. but this feeling cannot compensate certain natures for the forfeiture of the advantages which women of earlier times possessed, when they sat secure and protected within the four walls of the home, sucked the juice from family chronicles, guarded family traditions, maintained the old holiday customs, lived at the same time in the past and in the present.

the new woman lives in the present, sometimes 209even in the future—her land of romance! the enthusiasm of the old romanticism about a “hut and a heart” has little charm for her. for she knows reality and that prevents her from giving credence to the feminine illusion that twice two can be five. what she does know, on the contrary, is that out of fours she can gradually work out sixteen. while the women of former times could only save, the new woman can acquire. woman’s beautiful, foolish superstition regarding life has vanished, but her eagerness to achieve can still remove mountains, her daring has still often the splendour of a dream. intellectual values are for her no longer pastimes but necessities of life; with her culture has developed her feeling for truth and justice. this does not secure the new woman immunity at all times from new illusions and errors of feeling, nor does it prevent her developing passions whose value, to say the least, is questionable. but in and through her determination “to be some one,” to have a characteristic personality, she has acquired a love of life, in its diverse manifestations, both good and evil; a new capacity to enjoy her own and others’ individuality, as well as a new joy—sometimes an unblushing, insolent joy—in expressing her own being. in place of the earlier resignation toward society, the expression of rebellion is found even in the sparkling eye of the school-girl, with red cap upon her curly hair.

the young women of to-day, married or single, 210mothers as well as those who are childless, are still more vigorous in soul, more courageous, more eager for life than are men. because all that which for men has so long been a matter of course, is for women new, rich, enchanting, comprising, as it does, free life in nature, scientific studies, serious artistic work economic independence. even in a fine and soulful woman there is found something of the inevitable hardness toward herself and others of which an observer is instinctively conscious when he speaks of some woman as one who “will go far” upon the course she has chosen. the modern young woman desires above all else the elevation of her own personality. she experiences the same feeling of joy a man is conscious of when she realises that her strength of will is augmented, her ability becoming more certain, her depth of thought greater, her association of ideas richer. she stands ready to choose her work and follow her fate; in sorrow as in joy she experiences the blessedness of growth, and she loves her view of life and the work to which she has dedicated herself, often as devotedly as man loves his.

if we compare the seventeen-year-old girl of to-day with her progenitor living in the middle of the foregoing century, we find that the girl of earlier times was to a larger extent swayed by feeling, and that the modern girl is to a larger extent determined by ideas. the former was directed more to the centre of life, the latter remains often nearer the periphery; the former was warmer, 211the latter is more intelligent; the former was better balanced, the latter is more interesting.

the restlessness, the uncertainty, the feeling of emptiness, the suffering, that is sometimes experienced by the young woman of to-day, is primarily traceable to the disintegration of religious belief, which gave to the older generation of emancipated women an inner stability, resignation, and self-discipline. scientific study has deprived many modern women of their belief and those who can create a new one, suited to their needs, are still very few. thus to the outer homelessness an inner estrangement is added. the woman movement has, it is true, contributed indirectly to this spiritual distress by making the road to man’s culture accessible to woman. for men also suffer in like manner, and suffer above all perhaps because our culture is unstable, aimless, and lacks style, owing to the very fact that it is at present without a religious centre. and even the future can give to mankind no such new centre as the middle ages had, for example, in catholicism. the attainment of individualism has shut out that possibility forever.

but one factor in the religion of the past, the adoration of motherhood as divine mystery; one factor in the religion of the middle ages, the worship of the madonna, has meanwhile been given back to the present by the doctrine of evolution, with that universal validity which the thought must possess which seeks to give again to culture 212a centre. great, solitary individuals—prophets more often than sibyls—have proclaimed the religion of this generation. but the word will become flesh only when fathers and mothers instil into the blood and soul of children their devout hope for a higher humanity. when women are permeated by this hope, this new devout feeling, then they will recover the piety, the peace, and the harmony which for the present, and partly owing to feminism, have been lost.

the innumerable new relations which the woman movement has established between woman and the home, between woman and society, and all of the interchanges of new spiritual forces which have been put in operation because of these relations, cannot possibly take fixed form, at least not so long as the woman movement remains “a movement”; in other words, as long as everything is in a condition of flux, in a state of becoming, all spiritual relationships between individuals must change their form. continual new, fine shades of feeling, not to be expressed in words, determine every woman’s soul and every woman’s fate. and even ancient feelings receive continually different nuances, different intonations. i am, therefore, laying down no laws but merely recapitulating certain suggestions based on what has previously been said in regard to the soul of the modern woman, as seen in that portion of the present generation whose age ranges between twenty and thirty years—that is to say, that 213part of the generation which is decisive for the immediate future.

since co-education is becoming more and more general, each sex is beginning to have more esteem for the other, and woman, as well as man, is beginning to found self-respect upon work. when all women by culture and capacity for work have finally become strong-willed, self-supporting co-workers in society, then no woman will give or receive love for any extraneous benefit whatsoever. no outward tie and no outward gain through love—this is the ultimate aim of the new sex morale as the most highly developed modern young woman sees it.

the new woman is deeply convinced that the relation between the sexes attains its true beauty and sanctity only when every external privilege disappears on both sides, when man and woman stand wholly equal in what concerns their legal right and their personal freedom.

she demands that the contrasts between legal and illegal, rich and poor, boy and girl, shall disappear, and that society shall show the same interest in the complete human development of all children. she knows that when both sexes awake to a feeling of responsibility toward the future generation, then the real concern of sexual morale becomes the endeavor to give the race an ever more perfect progeny. and in order to feel in its fulness this command, maidens as well as youths must henceforth demand scientific 214instruction in sexual duties toward themselves and their possible children.

the new woman is also deeply convinced that only when she feels happy—and happiness signifies the development of the powers inherent in the personality—can she properly fulfil her duties as daughter, wife, and mother. she can consciously sacrifice a part of her personality, for example forego the development of a talent, but she can never subjugate nor surrender her whole personality and at the same time remain a strong-willed member of the family or of society, in the broadest meaning of the word. she must assert her conception of life, her feeling of right, her ideals. and no social considerations for children, husband, or family life are, for her, above the consideration which, in this respect, she owes to her own personality. when conflicts arise, she seeks, wherever possible, a solution that will permit her to fulfil her duty without annihilating herself. but if this is not possible, then she feels that it is her first duty not to fall below her ideal, either physically or spiritually. for this would prevent her from fulfilling precisely those duties for which she has so sacrificed herself; duties which she can perhaps perform later under other conditions, provided she has saved herself from being extinguished by brutality or despotism.

but along with this individualism there exists in the new woman a feeling for the unity of existence, the unity in which all things are parts and 215in which nothing is lost. she does not, then, look upon husband and children as continually demanding sacrifice and upon herself as being always sacrificed; she sees herself and them, as in the antiquity of the race, always existing by means of one another. she is not consumed by her love, for she knows that under such circumstances she would deprive her loved ones of the wealth of her personality. but although she will not, like the women of earlier times, abandon her ego absolutely, she will not, on the other hand, like certain modern feminists, keep it unreservedly. she will preserve upon a higher plane the old division of labour which made man the one who felled the game, fought the battles, made conquests, achieved advancement through victories; and which made woman the one who rendered the new domains habitable, who utilised the booty for herself and hers, who transmitted what was won to the new generation—all that of which woman’s ancient tasks as guardian of the fire and cultivator of the fields are beautiful symbols. she feels that when each sex pursues its course for the happiness of the individual and of mankind, but at the same time and as an equal helps the other in the different tasks, then each is most capable, then society is most benefited.

the fact that there is still so much masculine brutality and despotism, and that there are so many legal means at man’s disposal whereby he may put into practice with impunity this brutality 216and despotism, is the reason why the new woman is still always a “feminist,” why she still maintains the fundamental tenets of the woman movement. but she is not a feminist in the sense that she turns against man. her solution is always that of mary wollstonecraft: “we do not desire to rule over men but to rule over ourselves.” she often exhibits now in deliberation and in determination the characteristics which were formerly called “masculine”: practical knowledge, love of truth, courage of conviction; she desists more and more from unjust imputations and empty words; she proposes a greater number of well-considered suggestions for improvements. the woman movement has now in a word a more universally human, a less one-sidedly feminine character. it emphasises more and more the fact that the right of woman is a necessity in order that she may fulfil her duties in the small, individual family, and exercise her powers in the great, universal human family for the general good. the new woman does not wish to displace man nor to abolish society. she wishes to be able to exercise everywhere her most beautiful prerogative to help, to support, to comfort. but this she cannot do so long as she is not free as a citizen and has not fully developed as a human personality. she knows that this is the condition not only of her own happiness, but also, in quite as high a degree, of the happiness of man. for every man who works, struggles, and suffers there is a mother, a 217wife, a sister, a daughter, who suffers with him. for every woman who in her way works and struggles, there is a father, a husband, a brother, or a son for whom her contribution directly or indirectly has significance. above all, the modern woman understands that in every marriage wherein a wife still suffers under man’s misuse of his legal authority, it is in the last analysis the man who sustains the greatest injury, for under present conditions he needs exercise neither kindness nor justice nor intelligence to be ruler in the family. these humane characteristics he must, therefore, begin to develop when the wife is legally his equal.

the sacred conviction of the new woman is that man and woman rise together, just as they sink together.

the antique sepulchres, on which man and wife stand hand in hand before the eternal farewell, could quite as well be the symbol of the entrance of modern man and modern woman into the new life, where they work together in order that the highest ideals of both—the ideals of justice and of human kindness—may assume form in reality. the motherly qualities of women are applied for the good of children as well as of the weak and the suffering. the arrival of the day when woman shall be given opportunity to exercise social motherliness in its full and popularly representative extent, can be only a question of time. in a century they will smile at our time, in which it was still the practice to debate about such obvious 218matters. and those who to-day ridicule the woman movement will be ridiculed most of all.

then we shall attain such an outlook on the great forces of the time,—the emancipation movements of labouring men and of women,—that we shall see how necessary both were in order that society should come to understand that not the mass of material production, but the higher cultivation of the race is the social-political end, and that for this end the service of mother must receive the honour and oblation that the state now gives to military service.

and women themselves, whom nature has made creators and protectors of the tender life—the task for which nature even in the plant world has made such wonderful provision—will no longer resist being more intimately associated with nature, nearer to earth, more like plants, more restrained in outer sense and therefore, in inner respects, less active than man, who always had more of the freedom of movement of the forest animal. the woman of the future will not, as do many women of the present time, wish to be freed from her sex; but she will be freed from sexual hypertrophy, freed to complete humanity. for the universal, human characteristics, forced to remain latent in the primitive division of labour, because the father was obliged to exert all his strength in one direction and the mother in another, can now, through the facilities for culture in the 219struggle for existence, be developed on both sides: woman can develop the latent quality which became active in man as “manliness”; man can develop the latent quality which became active in woman as “womanliness.” but the proportional ratio of these characteristics, which development has already strengthened, will on the whole remain fixed—the proportional ratio which, in the progress of evolution, gave to woman the ascendency in regard to inward creative powers, and to man the ascendency in regard to outward creative powers—a proportional ratio which for the present has made woman more gifted in the sphere of feeling, man more potent in the sphere of ideas; which has made her the listener and yearner in the sphere of the spiritual life, and him the pioneer investigator and founder of systems, that has given her more of the christian, and him more of the pagan virtues. the improvement of the universal, human characteristics of both sexes elevates also the plane upon which they exercise their especial functions, valuable alike for culture. with increasing frequency the one sex may, when so desired, assume the culture function of the other.

a perfect fusion of the two spiritual sex-characters would, on the contrary, have the same result as physical hermaphroditism—sterility. genius—and in using the term we limit its meaning to poetic genius, for real feminine genius has thus far appeared only in that domain—embraces, 220as emphasised above, both man and woman, but not harmoniously blended. for such a genius would be unproductive, as we imagine those celestial forms to be which are neither “man nor woman.” the masculine and the feminine characteristics, which exist side by side in the poet soul, produce work in co-operation. alternately, however, they seek to usurp the entire power, whereby is occasioned the disharmony which enters into the life of those who endeavour to fulfil at one and the same time the universal, human duties as well as those of sex. indeed it may be that one of the reasons why great poetic geniuses, masculine as well as feminine, have often had no progeny at all, and in other cases one of little significance, is that their nature was not capable of a double production, that poetic creation received the richest part of their physical and psychical power.

whether the opinion of genius expressed here is correct or not, does not, however, affect the general situation. for the genius will always go his own way, which is never that of the average man. from the point of view of the ordinary individual an effacement of the spiritual sex character would be in still higher degree a misfortune for culture and nature. for it is the difference in the spiritual as well as in the physical sex-characteristics that makes love a fusion of two beings in a higher unity, where each finds the full deliverance and harmony of his being. with the 221elimination of the spiritual difference psychical love would vanish. there would be left, then, upon the one side, only the mating instinct, in which the same points of view as in animal breeding must obtain; on the other, only the same kind of sympathy which is expressed in the friendship between persons of the same sex, the sympathy in which the human, individual difference instead of sexual difference forms the attraction. in love, on the other hand, sympathy grows in intensity, the more universally human and at the same time sexually attractive the individual is: the “manly” in man is charmed by the “womanly” in woman, while the “womanly” in man is likewise captivated by the “manly” in woman, and vice versa. but when neither needs the spiritual sex of the other as his complement, then man, in erotic respects, returns to the antique conception of the sex relationship, of which plato has drawn the final logical conclusion.

the “humanity” in the soul of man was strengthened when he felt himself necessary to mother and child. when woman by sweetness and tenderness taught man to love, not only to desire, then his humanity increased immeasurably.

in our time the average man is beginning to learn that woman does not desire him as man, that she looks down upon him as a lower kind of being, that she does not need him as supporter. he does not at all grasp what it is the woman of 222highest culture seeks, demands, and awaits from his sex. but he learns that even the mediocre woman rejects the best he has to give her erotically; that imbued as she is with ideals of “universal humanity,” she no longer needs him as the supplement to her sexual being. then brutality awakes in him anew; then his erotic life loses what humanity it had won; then he begins to hate woman. and not with the imaginative, theoretical hatred of thinkers and poets; but with the blind rage which the contempt of the weaker for the stronger arouses in him. and here we encounter what is, perhaps, the deepest reason for the present war between the sexes, appearing already in the literary world as well as in the labour market.

here the extreme feminists play unconsciously about an abyss,—the depths in the nature of man out of which the elementary, hundred-thousand-year-old impulses arise, the impulses which all cultural acquisitions and influences cannot eradicate, so long as the human race continues to subsist and multiply under present conditions.

the feminism which has driven individualism to the point where the individual asserts her personality in opposition to, instead of within, the race; the individualism which becomes self-concentration, anti-social egoism, although the watchword inscribed upon its banner is “society instead of the family,”—this feminism will bear 223the blame should the hatred referred to lead to war.

it would be a pity to conclude a survey of the influence of the woman movement with an expression of fear lest this extreme feminism should be victorious. i believe not; no more than i believe that the sun will for the present be extinguished or streams flow back to their sources.

no “culture” can annul the great fundamental laws of nature; it can only ennoble them; and motherhood is one of these fundamental laws. i hope that the future will furnish a new and a more secure protection for motherhood than the present family and social organisation affords. i place my trust in a new society, with a new morality, which will be a synthesis of the being of man and that of woman, of the demands of the individual and those of society, of the pagan and christian conceptions of life, of the will of the future and reverence for the past.

when the earth blooms with this beautiful and vigorous flower of morality, there will no longer be a woman movement. but there will always be a woman question, not put by women to society but by society to women: the question whether they will continue in a higher degree to prove themselves worthy of the great privilege of being the mothers of the new generation.

in the degree in which this new ethics permeates mankind, women will answer this question in 224life-affirmation. and the result of their life-affirmation will be an enormous enhancement of life, not only for women themselves but for all mankind.