That bad education may affect it for evil no one can question, but we must distinguish between nature and nurture. We may be perfectly confident that so far as the _natural_ material of girl-childhood and girlhood is concerned, there is no falling off; there will not, for there cannot, be any falling off either in the quality or in the quantity of the maternal instinct. On the contrary, it can, and will later be shown that through the action of heredity this instinct will be strengthened in the future, just in so far as motherhood becomes more and more a special privilege of those women in whom this instinct is strong, and who become mothers for the _only good reason_--that they love to have children of their own. I protest, then, against many critics, especially those who used to raise their now silent voices in opposition to the beginnings of the infant mortality campaign a few years ago, that we who criticize modern motherhood and find in its defects the causes of many and great evils, as we do, are asserting nothing whatever against the women of this day as compared with the women of former days, so far as their natural constitution is concerned; and if we criticize the results of bad education, that is mainly criticism of the blindness, the stupidity, and the carelessness of men, who are responsible for the parodies of education and the misdirection of ideals which have so grossly afflicted, and still afflict, childhood and girlhood in all civilized communities. Yet, again, there is another misconception of the maternal instinct as it exists in our own species, which is still more serious in its results. The argument is that, not only does the maternal instinct exist, but it is a sure guide to its possessor, who therefore requires no instruction--least of all at the hands of men. A woman being a woman knows all about babies, a man being a man knows nothing. Against this error the present writer has endeavoured to inveigh for many years past, and it is always retorted that insistence upon the ignorance of mothers is a very unwarrantable piece of discourtesy. It is nothing of the sort. Native ignorance is the mark of intelligence. It is just because instinct in us has not the perfection of detail which it has in, say, the insects, that it is capable of that limitless modification which shows itself in educated intelligence, and all that educated intelligence has achieved and will yet achieve. It may be permitted to quote from a former statement of this point:--[12]