The woman movement, in its present form, has accomplished its task if it has procured for every woman the _legal_ right to develop and practise her individual characteristics unhindered because of her sex. But after this emancipation of the woman as a _human being_ and a citizen, there remains her emancipation as a _woman_. And here no transformation of forms of thought and feeling, of manners and customs, attainable by any legal provisions or paragraphs, avail. The present woman movement has created and still continues to create the social _conditions_ for this last emancipation. But it will not approve such far extending results of its own work. It desires the same _rights_ but also the same duties for all women. If a single woman uses the freedom, which the woman movement has procured for her as a member of society, to fashion her individual life according to the deepest demands of her being, then the old guard trembles before the outcome of the battle for freedom in which it fought so valiantly. But nothing is more certain than that the feminine personality, whether her innermost desire be spiritual creative instinct, erotic happiness, maternal bliss, or universal human goodness, will acquire ever new forms of expression: forms of expression which the once liberal, now more conservative feminists and the modern socialistic feminists partly do not divine and partly—divining—deplore! For the present even the “emancipated” woman follows as a rule the paths which social custom has marked out for her sex, as well as the cultural ideas which have been, thus far, those of man. But if, in the coming thousand years, a _feminine_ culture shall really supplement the masculine, then this will be exactly in the measure in which women have the courage to create and to act as most feminists now do not even dare think. Then it will be evident that _all_ social movements of the present time, especially the woman movement and socialism, are only the work of the path finder for the masculine and feminine superman or, if you prefer the older expression, _complete man_. Like other “old guards,” the veterans of feminism will not surrender but will fall upon the field of battle. The little girls there below will one day celebrate their memory. For through their struggles the way became free for youth, the way which leads out to the wide sea where perhaps shipwreck awaits the one who ventures out into the darkness with her fragile skiff. But many will brave the voyage and bide their fate, strong, proud, and composed as the maiden in Schwind’s _Wasserfahrt_—that splendid symbol of the woman of the future. CHAPTER II THE INNER RESULTS OF THE WOMAN MOVEMENT