In this connection it may be recalled that many of the most gifted, most highly developed woman personalities of to-day have produced nothing, but have been what a Frenchman has called “les grandes inspiratrices.” These have not, indeed, like the “Ladies” of the Middle Ages, been worshipped at a distance by knights and poets; but they have had an influence similar to that of Beatrice, through the power of communication of their rich personality in a relationship which had now the character of an “amitié amoureuse,” now that of a love imbued with sympathy, which in some cases, infrequently however, led to marriage. I need only mention the name Richard Wagner for the forms of two such women to appear, one of whom, who was his wife, surpassed in personal greatness all independently creative women of her time. But there have always been less unusual women who had significance as propagandists of the ideas of a great man through their specifically feminine gifts of convincing, of diffusing ideas, of modifying views, etc. If the future, because of the wife’s zeal for production on her own part, should lose this element of culture, it would be deplorable. One of the favourite arguments of the woman movement has been that two married people working in the same profession had the best opportunities for understanding each other and consequently also for being happy. And truly they can best talk shop with each other. But that is what the working man needs least of all in his home; there he seeks rather relaxation from his calling, or at least a quite disinterested, immediate sympathy with its annoyances or joys. When one of the married fellow-workmen needs exactly this sympathy, the other is perhaps busy or too tired to be capable of such lively interest as the other expects. Or one has experienced disappointments, the other joys, and then a real sympathy is still more difficult. To these crossings of mood is added also the unintentional, involuntary competition, which the similarity of vocation brings with it. The wife gains patients, the husband does not; his picture is praised, hers is pulled to pieces; she comes home from the theatre victorious, he after a defeat. During work, the criticism of one often disturbs the other; after the work, the criticism of the press disturbs the harmony of both. Love wishes to fuse them into one being, the outer world compels them always to feel themselves separate. In the beginning they think: “Nothing can come between us.” But if both do not possess a rare tenderness as well as rare fineness of soul, soon needles of ice fly through the air between them. Only when the wife, as is the case so often in France, puts her ability into her husband’s affairs does this common interest prevent rivalry.