The men who fear political life for woman are, however, right. Just as this life has injured the best qualities in the manhood of many men, so will it impair the womanhood of many women. Neither the spiritual personality of woman nor of man, nor even their secondary physical sex characteristics can withstand the influences of their private _milieu_, of their private labour conditions. Why should women better resist the influences of the public life? When the man is compelled, in political work for the state, to neglect in the highest degree the foundation of the state—the home—how should women be able to do otherwise than the same thing? The political work of both can benefit the home _in general_ but _their own_ home must always suffer for it, for a time at least. Women will learn, as so many men have already learned, that the fresh enthusiasm, the unexhausted optimism with which they entered the political life soon vanish before party pressure, general prejudice, opportunism, and the demands of compromise. And just as now so many men for these reasons withdraw from Parliament, many women will do likewise when they learn that what they can accomplish there with the characteristics peculiar to them, is so insignificant that it does not compensate for the injury which ensues because these characteristics are missing in the home. If the eligibility of woman is really to benefit society, then the right of resignation must be unconditioned for mothers, and they themselves must understand that the parliamentary mandate is incompatible with motherhood so long as the children are still in the home; in like manner during the same period, the franchise of the mother of a family must not result in rushing into electioneering. The ballot in and of itself does not injure the fineness of a woman’s hand any more than a cooking receipt. * * * * * Because woman’s motherhood must be preserved, if she is to bring to the social organism a really _new_ factor, so she must always continue to be found and to work in private life, in order to be, meanwhile, useful in public life. The genius of social reform which women will develop can complement that of man only if this genius is of a new order; if it originates thoughts which bring new points of view to the social problems, wills which seek new means, souls which aspire to new ends. Women could, if they received their full civic right before they lost their intuitive and instinctive power through masculinisation, effect the progress of culture as, for example, the entrance of the Germans influenced the antique world.