Therefore, that love to her own children which is inborn in woman, that exclusive love against which it is quite vain to strive by reasoning, will always be, and ought to be, natural to a woman and a mother. That love to a child in its infancy is not egotism, it is the love of a workman for the work which he is doing while it is in his hands. Take away that love for the object of one's work, and the work becomes impossible. While I am making a boot, I love it above everything. If I did not love it, I could not work at it. If anybody spoils it for me, I am in despair; but I only love it thus while I am working at it. When it is completed, there remains an attachment, a preference, which is weak and illegitimate. It is the same with a mother. A man is called to serve others by multifarious labours, and he loves those labours while he is accomplishing them. A woman is called to serve others by her children, and she cannot help loving those children of hers while she is rearing them to the age of three, seven, or ten years. In the general vocation of serving God and others, man and woman are entirely equal, notwithstanding the difference of the form of that service. The equality consists in the equal importance of one service and of the other,--that the one is impossible without the other, that the one depends upon the other, and that for efficient service, as well for man as for woman, the knowledge of truth is equally necessary. Without this knowledge, the activity of man and woman becomes not useful but pernicious for mankind. Man is called to fulfil his multifarious labour; but his labour is only useful, and his physical, mental, and social labour is only fruitful, when it is fulfilled in the name of truth and the welfare of others. A man can occupy himself as zealously as he will to increase his pleasures by vain reasoning and with social activity for his own advantage: his labour will not be fruitful. It will be so only when it is directed towards lessening the suffering of others through want and ignorance and from false social organization. The same with woman's vocation: her bearing, nursing, and bringing up children will only be useful to mankind when she gives birth to children not only for her own pleasure, but when she prepares future servants of mankind; when the education of those children is done in the name of truth and for the welfare of others,--that is to say, when she will educate her children in such a manner that they shall be the very best men possible, and the very best labourers for others. The ideal woman, in my opinion, is the one who,--appropriating the highest view of life of the time in which she lives, yet gives herself to her feminine mission, which is irresistibly placed in her,--that of bringing forth, nursing and educating, the greatest possible number of children, fitted to work for people according to the view which she has of life.