Those men who, from the observation that woman’s professional and brain work seems to stand in inverse proportion to her fecundity, have drawn the conclusion that woman must “return to nature,” leave her brain unemployed and exclusively bear children, are easily refuted. There is no satisfactory evidence that mental work in itself need injure woman’s capacity for easy and happy motherhood. In the animal world, as among savages, the females easily bear motherhood together with other great burdens. In civilised communities, on the other hand, it is partly through a lower class, whose bodies are overworked, partly through an upper class, who overwork their brains—or else do not work at all,—that the physical difficulties of motherhood have arisen. That the world’s greatest female geniuses have had few children or none, is in full analogy with the great male geniuses—while these men as a rule have had gifted and distinguished mothers, an experience which alone is sufficient proof that woman’s “weak-mindedness” may not be the most favourable state of mind for the enhancement of the race. No conclusive evidence can be adduced against the statement that, when brainwork is moderate and combined with proper care of the health, it may have good effects also in women. The same is true of bodily labour. But as both are carried on at present, the woman, no more than the man, has been able to keep within the limit of her powers. Therefore at present woman’s studies and bread-winning labour involve dangers which have been increased under the spur of the dogma of equality, which has driven woman on to show that she could bear everything that man bears—that is to say, more than man or woman can endure. But when once studies and labour have been somewhat organised, they do not in themselves involve anything that will make the unmarried woman any less fit to be a mother of the race; on the contrary, they are certain to involve much that will make her more valuable. It is thus not for the unmarried woman that the conflict is presented in the form of a choice between renouncing—even in the uncertain possibility of motherhood—the development or use of one’s purely human powers. And when perfect candour as regards the sexual life has become the custom between the sexes even from childhood, it will also be possible for women, during work, study, or exercise, to have those considerations for health which modesty has hitherto led them to neglect. In this way, but not through the employment itself, many a woman has lost her chances of motherhood. Thus the conflict does not commence until marriage; and for the exceptionally gifted, as we have already said, it may be tragic. For the majority it will not become so unless the wife is obliged to earn her living outside the home and at the same time wishes fully to perform her duties as mother, or when she wishes to attend to her personal business but is prevented by a large family from so doing.