The significance of the vocation of mother has been underrated in its significance even by moderate feminists. But these were right when they demonstrated that the “sanctity” of this office had become a mere phrase, so badly or amateurishly was this vocation fulfilled—an indictment in which Nietzsche and feminism for one rare moment are on common ground. Mothers needed the spur of this contempt; it was necessary that their feeling of responsibility, their universal human culture, their personal self-reliance, should be aroused by the woman movement. Only so could the new generation acquire the new type of women who for the present seek to qualify themselves by self-culture for the office of mother, in the expectation that for all women an obligatory education for motherhood will be realised. So long as this vocation _can_ be practised without any training, nothing can be known of the possibilities whereby ordinary mothers may become good educators—unless they place the mother love and the intuitive understanding of the nature of the child that it affords above even the best outside teachers. Just as a glorious voice makes a country girl a “natural singer,” so nature has at all times made certain mothers—and not least the women of the people—natural educators of children. The biography of nearly every great man shows the place the mother through her personality occupied in the life of her son, the atmosphere which she diffused about her in the home, her direct and indirect influence. But only the culture of their natural gifts with conscious purpose will make of mothers artists. When Nietzsche wrote: “_There will come a time when we shall have no other thought than education_,” and when he placed this education specifically in the hands of mothers, least of all did he mean those “arts of education,” from which amaternals believe they “guard” children by rejecting an “artistically creative” home training by the mother, as a violence to the peculiar characteristic of the child!