Here the extreme feminists play unconsciously about an abyss,—the depths in the nature of man out of which the elementary, hundred-thousand-year-old impulses arise, the impulses which all cultural acquisitions and influences cannot eradicate, so long as the human race continues to subsist and multiply under present conditions. The feminism which has driven individualism to the point where the individual asserts her personality in opposition to, instead of within, the race; the individualism which becomes self-concentration, anti-social egoism, although the watchword inscribed upon its banner is “Society instead of the family,”—this feminism will bear the blame should the hatred referred to lead to war. * * * * * It would be a pity to conclude a survey of the influence of the woman movement with an expression of fear lest this extreme feminism should be victorious. I believe not; no more than I believe that the sun will for the present be extinguished or streams flow back to their sources. No “culture” can annul the great fundamental laws of nature; it can only ennoble them; and motherhood is one of these fundamental laws. I hope that the future will furnish a new and a more secure protection for motherhood than the present family and social organisation affords. I place my trust in a new society, with a new morality, which will be a synthesis of the being of man and that of woman, of the demands of the individual and those of society, of the pagan and Christian conceptions of life, of the will of the future and reverence for the past. When the earth blooms with this beautiful and vigorous flower of morality, there will no longer be a woman movement. But there will always be a woman question, not put by women to society but by society to women: the question whether they will continue in a higher degree to prove themselves worthy of the great privilege of being the mothers of the new generation. In the degree in which this new ethics permeates mankind, women will answer this question in life-affirmation. And the result of their life-affirmation will be an enormous enhancement of life, not only for women themselves but for all mankind. THE END ----- Footnote 1: In the summer of 1909 I sat in a Swedish home where the grandmother, for this reason, had never learned to write but where the granddaughter read aloud the thesis for her bachelor’s examination. One hears even to-day of customs and points of view in certain farms and manses which faithfully imitate those of the time of the Reformation. Footnote 2: Next to the textile industry, the tobacco industry employs the most women. Footnote 3: