At every turn the truth is more and more impressed, that the fate of Humanity rests, in some or other form, with its women. Woman is Redeemer; or she is Destroyer. Because, while man's province is the material, with its roots in temporal things, woman's province is the vital, with its roots and stem and blossom in functioning Life. The burning wrongs of women? Alas! what are they beside the burning wrongs of helpless babes and children? * * * * * XII An anomaly of Feminism is the admission, on the one hand, that Motherhood was woman's most valuable function, and her greatest claim on the community in days of barbarism, and the denial, on the other, that it is her most important function in civilisation. The illogic of the position is patent. That the production of savages should be primitive woman's chiefest claim to honour; while the production of highly-evolved and complex human beings should be civilised woman's least. The potence and the values of fine motherhood are proven by the fact that every great, or good, or clever man or woman has been the child of a great, or good, or clever mother. Not of one who has made her mark in the world of affairs. Such, for the most part, have not reproduced at all. And when they have been mothers their children have been notably of inferior calibre. On the other hand, bad men and bad women have in nearly every instance been sons or daughters of bad women. Examples innumerable might be cited to show that both genius and moral greatness are variations (mutations) of the human species which have their origin in mother-genius and greatness. Great scientists, it has been noted, have been sons of women characterised by intense love of Truth. The love of Truth in the mother--for Truth's sake--became in the executive, concrete mentality of the son an intuitive apprehension of the truths of Science, and an eager and indomitable aspiration to render these in terms of intellection. * * * * * Shall woman leave to man no field at all of natural supremacy? Shall she not be content with her beautiful part as generatrix of Faculty, but must seek to be exponent too? That all women do not marry--cannot marry, indeed, because of their preponderance in number over the other sex--is no reason for dissembling the truth that in wifehood and motherhood lie woman's most vital and valuable rôles. Nor is it warrant for training the whole sex as though none were destined to fulfil this, their natural and noblest--if not always, their happiest vocation. XIII