Now it is the simple, obvious truth,--so obvious and unchallengeable that somehow it has never been stated--that in any human society the parents are the most important people. The division is not between education and the lack of it, or wealth and the lack of it, or breeding and the lack of it. It is not the aristocracy that matters supremely; nor the "great middle-class"; nor the masses; nor the teachers; nor the doctors; nor the servants of modern industrialism. The classification is a biological one--into parents and non-parents. The non-parents may be invaluable in their way, if only they beget something that is valuable. Heaven forbid that I should undervalue the children of the mind. But if we are to classify any nation, the first and last classification of any moment is none of those in which we always indulge and which all our customs and traditions and prejudices are ever seeking to perpetuate; but the classification into those who will die childless and those who create the future race. That is why, for me at any rate, the subject of women's rights is jejune and sterile compared with the subject of this chapter. First let us ascertain the rights of mothers and grant them, to the very uttermost; then let us do the same for the fathers. Let us exact of each the corresponding duties; and the next generation, brought into being under such conditions, will solve all our problems. But whilst we neglect the first things we shall permanently solve no problem at all. We may seem to do so, but if we dishonour parenthood, if we leave the inferior women to mother the future, the degenerate race that must ensue will find itself in difficulties compared with which ours are trivial, and our solutions of them impotent. That is why I seek to draw attention to the rights not of women as women,--for neither men nor women have any peculiar rights as men or women--nor yet to the rights of wives as wives, but to the rights of mothers as mothers, whether married or unmarried, whether husbanded or widowed. The rights of women are the rights of human beings, and no special concern of a writer on woman and womanhood, paradoxical as the assertion may be. The rights of wives are often discussed, but I question whether the discussion ever helped a wife yet, except solely in the matter of her monetary claims upon her husband. Discussion and public opinion and consequent legislation can effect, and have effected, something for wives as wives in this matter. In other matters, much more vital to their happiness, each case is unique because all individuals are unique; and the discussion of the questions can amount to no more than futile and obvious platitude.