Until that time secular misdeeds, political injustice, economic
struggles,--all these socially destructive abuses will go on from
generation to generation. Mankind remains the same though its acts may
take different shapes. Thinkers will always find new ideas, scholars new
methods and systems, artists new æsthetic creations, but on the whole
everything must remain the same. Only when woman heeds the message which
life proclaims to her, that, through her, salvation must come--will the
face of the earth be renewed. Oratorical talk of the high task of
mothers and of the great profession of education are empty phrases,
until we see that the possibility of humanity and civilisation winning
some day the victory over savagery depends on the physiological and
psychological transformation of man's nature. This transformation
requires an entirely new conception of the vocation of mother, a
tremendous effort of will, continuous inspiration. Those who believe
they can fulfil their duties as mothers and at the same time can
accomplish other valuable work have never made the experiment of
education. The long continued habit of alternately caressing and
striking one's children is not education. It needs tremendous power to
do one's duty to a single child. This by no means signifies giving up to
the child every hour of one's time, but it does mean that our soul is
to be filled by the child, just as the man of science is possessed by
his investigations and the artist by his work. The child should be in
one's thoughts when one is sitting at home or walking along the road,
when one is lying down or when one is standing up. This devotion, much
more than the hours immediately given to one's children, is the
absorbing thing; the occupation which makes an earnest mother always go
to any external activity with divided soul and dissipated energy.
Therefore the mother, if she gives her children the share they need, can
devote to social activities only her occasional attention. And for the
same reason she should be entirely free from working to earn her living
during the most critical years of the children's training.
Neither in the upper nor in the lower classes, have I ever heard of any
mother forced to do work of this kind or one engaged in artistic
productions through the stimulus of her talents, who was able to satisfy
her children in the period when they were growing up.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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