She still retains the old consciousness that a mother ought to be unselfishly absorbed in her mission; that she ought to repose in it with a profound calm; that she ought therefore to allow the inner voices, which urge her to follow her instinct of personal development, to remain unheard. Added to this, she has the new consciousness that the bringing-up of a child demands the same undivided attention as the production of a work; that the child is just as sensitive as the work to a divided mind, a wandering attention. She wishes, as an authoress has aptly said, “that she could be at the same time the mother of past ages: the patiently bearing caryatid, who was always in her place, with the bowl ready for the child’s thirsty lips; and the mother of the present day: ever on the move, seeking out all new paths, quenching her thirst at all the springs of life.” She becomes more and more unique, by being ever more firmly and delicately individualised, and in the process her desire increases to live her own life in every direction. But at the same time her feeling of community with the race increases, and therewith her consciousness of responsibility as mother and human being becomes more and more aroused. The more “egocentric” she has become, the less does she remain a family-egoist. The demands of her personality become ever more definite, ever wider but at the same time more fastidious in their choice, ever more difficult to satisfy. Her growing sense of personal dignity imposes on her an ever stronger self-control—while her whole being is quivering with an ever more delicate sensitiveness. And upon this new woman, who is already the embodiment of unrest, thirst for life, and suffering, the hungry, violent spirit of the present day flings itself like a cat seizing a bird. A hundred times a day such a woman is forced to subordinate the claims of personality to those of society; a hundred times the will of her personality has to elude her feeling of responsibility. Perfected methods of work may spare her hands and her footsteps, but they cannot prevent her eyes from watching with increasing disquiet the balance wherein affection, sympathy, and responsibility are weighed against her most intimate longing, her creative joy, her thirst for solitude, and her self-development. And as first one side of the balance rises and then the other, it will always seem to her that the heavier one contains a piece of living flesh cut from her heart; while the side which is—for the moment—lighter has nothing but dead, though perhaps golden, weights.