If we were wise enough, therefore, we should recognize all education, in the great sense of that word, to be _as for parenthood_. That ideal will yet be recognized and followed for both sexes, as it has for long been followed, consciously as well as unconsciously, by that astonishing race which has survived all its oppressors, and is in the van of civilization to-day as it was when it produced the Mosaic legislation. The time is not yet when one could accept with a light heart an invitation to lecture on fatherhood to the boys at Eton. Boys to-day are taught by each other, and by those who give them what they call "smut jaws," that what exists for fatherhood, and thus for the whole destiny of mankind, is "smut." When such blasphemies pass for the best pedagogic wisdom, to preach parenthood as the goal of all worthy education is to run the risk of being looked upon as ridiculous. But the time will come when the hideous Empire-wrecking Imperialisms of the present are forgotten, and when we have a new Patriotism--which suggests, first and foremost, as that word well may, the duty of fatherhood; and then, perhaps, "smut jaws" will not be the phrase at Eton for discussion of those instincts which determine the future of mankind. But girls are our present concern, and we may indeed hope that, though the day is still far when the motto of Eton will be education as for fatherhood, yet the ideal of education as for motherhood may yet triumph wherever girls are taught within even a few years to come. On all sides to-day we see the aberrations of womanhood in a hundred forms, and the consequences thereof. Wrong education is partly, beyond a doubt, to be indicted for this state of things, and the right direction is so clearly indicated by nature and by the deepest intuitions of both sexes that we cannot much longer delay to take it. Perhaps the reader will have patience whilst for a little we discuss the facts upon which right education for motherhood must be based. Some may suppose that by education for womanhood is meant simply one form or other of instruction; say, for instance, in the certainly important matter of infant feeding. At present, however, I am not thinking of instruction at all, but of education--the leading forth, that is to say, in right proportion and in right direction of the natural constituents of the girl. If we are to be right in our methods we must have some clear understanding of what those constituents are, and we must therefore address ourselves now to getting, if possible, clear and accurate notions of the material with which we have to deal; in other words, we must discuss the psychology of parenthood. We shall perhaps realize then that though the instruction of mothers in being is very necessary and very important, that comes in at the end of our duty, and that we shall never achieve what we might achieve unless we begin at the beginning. XII THE MATERNAL INSTINCT