If I now start out to consider the woman soul as it has developed itself under the influence of all the circumstances mentioned above, perhaps many will expect a theory about the character of the feminine soul life. But, at present, when the greatest problems of psychology are in revolution and undecided, such a theory would be as scientifically impossible as aphorisms are unanswerable. Likewise, conclusions, based upon experience, concerning the psychic peculiarity of woman would be in this chaotic transition period, superficial, if they attempted to be absolute. Only _one_ decided opinion about the spiritual life of woman I cannot—in consequence of my monistic-evolutionary conception of the spiritual and physical life—refrain from expressing. This opinion is that, in the one hundred thousand years at least in which woman has practised the physical maternal functions, the spiritual attributes _essential_ for motherhood must have been so strongly developed by her that this development has had, and still has always, as a result a pronounced difference between the feminine and masculine soul—that is to say, everywhere where the soul, as well as the body of a woman, is adapted and desirous of motherhood—a fitness and readiness which can still be called the _normal_ condition. The spiritual qualities which maternity required have become the attributes of “womanliness,” the qualities which paternity required, have become the attributes of “manliness.” This difference has become quite as significant for the functional fitness of both sexes for the perpetuation and development of the race, as for the wealth of life of each new generation. The obliteration or retention of this difference is therefore a vital question for mankind. Figuratively expressed, this seems to me the process: from a common root of universal human spiritual life issue two stems which can again unite in their blossoming. The ramification has necessarily involved a division of labour in two equally important spheres. From this point of view I give, in the following, my opinion of the value of the influence of the woman movement upon the spiritual life of woman. We all know that life expresses itself as movement, that movement brings with it change, transformation; that this can mean quite as well disintegration as higher organisation. The woman movement is the most significant of all movements for freedom in the world’s history. The question whether this movement leads mankind in a higher or lower direction is the most serious question of the time. Those who assert unconditionally the former or the latter have uttered a premature judgment. The question must be formulated thus: