I do not wish to follow this question here. It is, however, widely evident that in the society we have evolved to-day there are many women in whom, what I may perhaps call, an atrophy of the maternal instincts has taken place. This may be regretted, it cannot wisely be blamed, for it forms no solution of the problem thus to mark down for blame. There is one way, and one way only, as far as I can see, whereby this great evil that has happened and still is taking place might be stayed. The maternal women, the mother type, should be the only women to be mothers; which is, of course, the same thing as saying that every child should be born of passionate desire. But this is not so simple in practice as at first sight it seems; it carries with it first the demand that women must be given the knowledge and means to prevent the conception of every undesired child; and second, and even more important, that all girls should be educated to understand something at least of their sexual nature so that they may know their own need and strongest instincts; then, does their desire turn towards motherhood, they will be better able to choose as the father of their children men who desire to be fathers as they desire to be mothers, so that together they may decide the number of children they will bring into the world and under what conditions. That is the only kind of motherhood that will endure. I am prepared for an objection here. I shall be told that a woman, much less a girl, does not know whether she wants a child until she bears one; that it is then her maternal instinct will develop. I do not believe it. I find this is the opinion of men and of women who have failed to think straight; both judge in these matters too arbitrarily and with too little understanding. They forget how difficult it has been, and still is, for any one of my sex to be at all sexually truthful. Considering the folly of the education we give to girls, there is little reliance to be placed on what any woman says about sex. What we need most of all is the liberation of women’s instincts through education in consciousness. Perhaps, then, we shall cease to expect the impossible, by which I mean we shall not hope to make good mothers of the girls who have no deep instinct to love children. I know, of course, that the girl who before marriage does not love children, may, and as a rule will, love her own child: but I am certain that in nine cases out of every ten she will do so in the wrong way; the child will be cherished only as a possession of herself, an extension of her own egoism, which is very far indeed from what I hold as the self-giving character of the mother-woman. Here is one reason why good motherhood is so rare.