But, on the other hand, the unmarried woman, from her own point of view as well as from that of the race, has a right to motherhood, when she possesses so rich a human soul, so great a mother’s heart, and so manly a courage that she can bear an exceptional lot. She has all the riches of her own and her lover’s nature to leave through the child as a heritage to the race; she has the whole development of her personality, her mental and bodily vital force, her independence won through labour, to give to the child’s bringing-up. In her occupation she has had use only for a part of her being: she desires to manifest it fully and wholly, before she resigns the gift of life. She therefore becomes a mother with the full approval of her conscience. All this, however, seldom applies to a woman before she has reached or exceeded the limit of _la seconda primavera_; not till then will she feel fully sure of her longing and her courage, nor will she have reason to know that life has no higher destiny for her. And even she must not be taken as an example of a final solution of the problem. But in times like ours, when the hindrances to life in this direction have become unendurable, bold experiments are justified—when they are successful. In order that such an experiment shall succeed, the woman must be not merely as pure as snow, she must be as pure as fire in her certainty of giving her own life a bright enhancement and a new treasure to the race in the child of her love. If she is this—then indeed there is a gulf, deep as the centre of the earth, fixed between this unmarried woman, who presents her child to the race, and the unmarried woman, who “has a child.” Beyond all doubt the first-named would have considered it the ideal of happiness to be able to bring up her child together with its father. The circumstances which prevent her may be many. The man’s liberty, for instance, may be limited by earlier duties or feelings, which bind him, against his will or not. The conditions of life or of work of one of them may prevent a complete union. So may the experience that the personality of one of them is fettered through marriage. Or again, love itself was not what it had promised to be, and the woman was proud enough not to consider herself fallen and in need of being rehabilitated by a marriage which, on the contrary, would under these circumstances be a fall. Finally, there are exceptional cases, where a superior woman—for it is often the best who are seized by the powerful desire of a child—feels that she cannot combine her motherhood with the claims of love and of intellectual production; that she can suffice for only two duties, and therefore accepts from love the child but renounces marriage. But there are also destinies entirely contrary to these, where a woman for her own part wished to have a child but renounces it for the man’s sake.